I have my A1 plugged into a soecial surge protector that provides power to the rest of the outlets if the one trigger outlet draws enough power. So the printer is always on so that I can send stuff to it but doesn’t draw a lot of power. When it’s heating up and printing the power draw increases enough to trigger the rest of the outlets and a desk lamp turns on so I can see what’s being printed better. This is especially helpful at night when the desk lamp is the only light in the small office my printer is in. It’s been set up like this for 2 years and it’s been great.
This morning I was not actively printing anything and I went into the office and the desk lamp was on. I looked at the printer and it wanted to update the firmware, so I did so. Afterward the lamp stayed on. I rebooted the printer multiple times and while it’s rebooting obviously the lamp is off and when it boots back up the lamp stays on.
What is causing this increased power draw? Any ideas or insights?
For now I’m leaving it fully off but I’ll have to manually go in and turn it on before sending something to print which is less convenient.
Mainboard and psu are the ones to take care the most but keep in mind that not all filament like to be printed in fully closed enclosure (without proper ventilation), PLA for exemple.
One way to monitor and secure my printer is to use smart devices. I have home assistant running at home, my printer has an integration available and i can recover several printer informations like status, temps, printing time… and i have several smart devices (mostly zigbee) which i use to monitor and apply automation based on scenarios. (temperature sensor, smoke detector, camera, light, plug to power on/off printer). I can then create automation like “when smoke detector has detected smoke, turn off printer, then send picture to my phone and broadcast a message in the house…”. I have maybe 5 different automation running for the printer but the possibilities are endless.