AnkerMake Home Assistant Component

Ever wanted a quick way to check the status of your AnkerMake M5 3D printer? This Home Assistant component allows you to do just that! It listens to the mqtt socket of an ankerctl instance and updates the status of your printer in real-time.

Note: There are a lot of hidden entities in the image above, which are mostly set as attributes of the displayed entities, such as the current print time, the current layer, the current print progress, the current print time left, etc.

3D Printer state changes to Finished -> Flash some pretty lights -> Hotend temperature is below 40C for 60 minutes -> Disconnect printer from power!

Installation

Download and install the component via hacs and reboot, then add the integration via the Home Assistant UI by searching for "AnkerMake" or click the button below.

Note: You can add as many instances as you'd like (but you will need an ankerctl instance configured for each printer).

Adding a camera (WIP)

Click to expand!

NOTE: This might not work for you YET! Also it isn't the most reliable feed. See PR/Draft in ankerctl: here

Using go2rtc

go2rtc.yaml (https://github.com/AlexxIT/go2rtc?tab=readme-ov-file#go2rtc-home-assistant-add-on)

streams:
  Anker:
    - ffmpeg:http://ankerctl-ip:4470/video

Alt: Frigate config

Note: Frigate just runs go2rtc

config.yml

go2rtc:
  streams:
    Anker:
      - "ffmpeg:http://ankerctl-ip:4470/video"

Lovelace Card (Home Assistant)

Add WebRTC integration from HACS (https://github.com/AlexxIT/WebRTC?tab=readme-ov-file#installation)

Use either http://<go2rtc_ip>:1984 or http://<frigate_ip>:1984 when configuring the integration, reboot and add a Custom: WebRTC Camera card to the dashboard:

type: custom:webrtc-camera
url: Anker

Dependencies

For this component to work, you will need an instance of ankerctl running and working. Please refer to the ankerctl documentation for installation instructions.

Alternatively you can try my fork of the ankerctl addon here: https://github.com/sondregronas/ankermgmt-hassio-addons - which includes a lot of changes from exsting pull requests. I recommend you create an automation to restart the addon every 2 hours to avoid socket issues.

NOTE: This AddOn might not receive any updates when the main branch of ankerctl gets updated.

(The branch of ankerctl I'm using: https://github.com/sondregronas/ankermake-m5-protocol/tree/patch-exiles-1.1-auto-restart-on-failure)

Click here for a docker-compose setup

You can use this docker-compose.yml file to start an instance of my fork of ankerctl. Note that the container is set to restart every 2 hours as a workaround for some socket issues I've encountered, but isn't strictly necessary.

services:
  ankerctl:
    container_name: ankerctl
    restart: unless-stopped
    build:
      context: https://github.com/sondregronas/ankermake-m5-protocol.git#patch-exiles-1.1-auto-restart-on-failure
    privileged: true
    # host-mode networking is required for pppp communication with the
    # printer, since it is an asymmetrical udp protocol.
    network_mode: host
    environment:
      - FLASK_HOST=0.0.0.0
      - FLASK_PORT=4470
    volumes:
      - ankerctl_vol:/root/.config/ankerctl
      - ./ankermake-m5-protocol/web/:/app/web

  # This container will restart the ankerctl container every 2 hours
  # as a temporary workaround for some socket issues.
  ankerctl_restarter:
    image: docker
    volumes: [ "/var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock" ]
    # 2 hours = 7200 seconds
    command: [ "/bin/sh", "-c", "while true; do sleep 7200; docker restart ankerctl; done" ]
    restart: unless-stopped
volumes:
  ankerctl_vol:

Known issues

There are probably many issues to list...

• Filament is just derived from the gcode name, which might not be accurate
• The state will be forgotten if home assistant restarts
• No camera support (but can be worked around using go2rtc, though PPPP crashes a lot - stable when it doesn't crash!)
• There are no ways to pause/stop a print
• There are (almost) no unit tests :(
• Logging is pretty much non-existent, documentation is a bit lacking
• ankerctl can crash sometimes, hindering the integration from working until it's restarted (restarting every 2hrs seems to work well for me)
• The API isn't added to the main branch of ankerctl yet (but it is in my fork - see above)

Testing

This component might be unstable! Please report any issues you encounter. I have barely tested it.

Development

Contributions are very welcome!

The easiest way to add new sensors is by editing the sensor_manifest.py and ankermake_mqtt_adapter.py files. The latter file converts the published mqtt messages to a AnkerData object which corresponds to the key in the sensor_manifest.py file.

The docker-compose.yml file can be used to start a local home assistant instance with the component installed.

Legal

This project is NOT endorsed, affiliated with, or supported by Anker.