Creator 5 Pro Dashboard

A self-hosted web dashboard for the FlashForge Creator 5 Pro 3D printer. Live status, temperatures, material station, chamber camera, and a working chamber-light toggle — served from a small Flask app in Docker, reachable from anywhere you can reach the container.

Built against firmware 1.9.4. It talks to the printer's local HTTP API on port 8898 — no cloud account, no vendor app.

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Features

• Live job — filename, thumbnail, percent, layer n/N, elapsed, remaining, speed, infill
• Temperatures — bed, chamber, and all four nozzles, with the active tool highlighted
• Material station — all 4 slots with their real filament colours, material names, and which is loaded
• Chamber camera — MJPEG stream, off by default, toggled on demand
• Chamber light — on/off, with the result verified against the printer (see why that matters)
• Lifetime totals — print hours, filament used, free storage, firmware, door, fans, TVOC
• Job history — the firmware keeps no per-job log, so the app records completed jobs itself

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Quick start

git clone https://github.com/afeind/Creator-5-Pro-Dashboard.git
cd Creator-5-Pro-Dashboard

cp .env.example .env
$EDITOR .env          # <-- put your printer IP, serial, and access code here

docker compose up -d

Then open http://localhost:5011.

Where does the code go? Everything you need to configure lives in .env, created by copying .env.example. That file is gitignored and is the only place credentials belong — nothing is hard-coded in the source. See Configuration.

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Finding your serial and access code

Two values are required, and they come from different places.

Serial number — discoverable over the network

The printer answers a UDP discovery probe on port 48899 (or 19000) with no authentication at all. Send it any payload and it replies with its model name and serial:

python3 -c "
import socket
s = socket.socket(socket.AF_INET, socket.SOCK_DGRAM); s.settimeout(3)
s.sendto(b'x', ('192.168.1.100', 48899))     # <-- your printer's IP
print(s.recvfrom(2048)[0])
"

You'll get back a fixed-width blob containing something like Creator 5 Pro and SNXXXXXXXXXXX. The SN... string is your serial.

Access code — only on the printer's screen

The access code (the API calls it checkCode) is shown only on the printer's own touchscreen, under its network/connection settings. There is no way to retrieve it over the network — that's the point of it.

Sanity-check both values before starting the app:

curl -s -X POST http://192.168.1.100:8898/detail \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -d '{"serialNumber":"SNXXXXXXXXXXX","checkCode":"xxxxxxxx"}'

Response	Meaning
{"code":0,...} plus a big JSON blob	Both correct
{"code":1,"message":"Access code is different"}	Serial fine, access code wrong
{"code":-1,"message":"Parameters is error"}	Malformed request / wrong serial

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Configuration

Variable	Required	Default	Notes
PRINTER_HOST	✅	192.168.1.100	Printer LAN IP
PRINTER_SERIAL	✅	—	SN..., see above
PRINTER_CHECK_CODE	✅	—	From the printer's touchscreen
PRINTER_API_PORT		8898	HTTP API port
PRINTER_CAM_PORT		8080	MJPEG camera port
PRINTER_CAM_PATH		/?action=stream	Camera path
DATA_DIR		/data	Where job history is written

The container publishes port 5011; change the mapping in docker-compose.yml if that clashes.

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Reverse proxy

To serve it behind a hostname, proxy to port 5011. Disable response buffering, or the camera stream will buffer forever and never render.

Caddy

printer.example.com {
    reverse_proxy 127.0.0.1:5011 {
        flush_interval -1          # required for MJPEG
    }
}

nginx

location / {
    proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:5011;
    proxy_buffering off;           # required for MJPEG
    proxy_read_timeout 3600s;
}

This app has no authentication of its own. Anyone who can reach it can control your printer. Keep it on your LAN or behind your proxy's auth — don't expose it to the open internet.

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Notes on the printer's API

Undocumented behaviour discovered while building this. Recorded here because it cost real time and may save yours.

The API lies about success

POST /control returns {"code":0,"message":"Success"} for any command — including ones that don't exist. Verified by sending {"cmd":"totalNonsenseCmd"} and getting Success back.

Consequence: you cannot discover command names by trial and error. Every wrong guess looks exactly like a right one. This app never trusts the reply — after sending a light command it re-reads /detail and reports what the printer actually says.

The light command has a _cmd suffix

// works
{"cmd": "lightControl_cmd", "args": {"status": "open"}}   // or "close"

// silently does nothing, still returns Success
{"cmd": "lightControl",     "args": {"status": "open"}}

Meanwhile streamCtrl has no suffix. The naming is inconsistent between commands, so there's no rule to infer — these strings were recovered by packet-capturing the official desktop app.

The camera is a one-shot

The MJPEG server at :8080 refuses connections until you enable it:

{"cmd": "streamCtrl", "args": {"action": "open"}}

It then serves exactly one client per enable — when that client disconnects, the stream stops again. Re-enable before every connection and allow ~2–3 s for the encoder to come up. A browser holding one long-lived connection is fine; rapid connect/disconnect testing looks like random failure.

/detail field quirks

Field	Gotcha
nozzleTemps / nozzleTargetTemps	Arrays of 4 — there is no single nozzleTemp. Active tool = the one with target > 0
estimatedTime	Time remaining, not job total. There is no estimatedLeftTime
printProgress	0..1, not a percentage
remainingDiskSpace	GB, not MB
cumulativePrintTime	Minutes
matlStationInfo.slotInfos[]	Per-slot materialName, materialColor (hex), hasFilament; currentSlot marks the loaded one

Full API surface

POST /detail, POST /control, POST /product, POST /uploadGcode, GET /getThum. Everything else 404s. There is no G-code passthrough. All calls except /getThum require {"serialNumber","checkCode"} in the body.

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Endpoints

Route	Purpose
GET /	Dashboard UI
GET /api/status	Normalised printer state
GET /api/raw	Raw /detail passthrough, for debugging
POST /api/light	{"on": true|false} — verifies against the printer
POST /api/camera	{"on": true|false} — enables/disables the stream
GET /camera/stream	Proxied MJPEG
GET /camera/thumb	Current job thumbnail
GET /api/history	Completed jobs recorded locally
GET /healthz	Health check

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Compatibility

Developed and tested against a Creator 5 Pro on firmware 1.9.4. Other FlashForge models using the same port-8898 API (Adventurer 5M / 5M Pro and relatives) may work, but field names differ between single- and multi-nozzle firmware — the normaliser in app.py handles both shapes where it can. Reports welcome.

License

MIT — see LICENSE.

Not affiliated with, endorsed by, or supported by FlashForge.