Printer Barcodes & Rapid API Endpoint for Filament Assignment#903

Hi SimplyPrint Team,

I run a growing print farm that is currently hitting the 20-printer mark, and I am looking for ways to further streamline my filament management. Since I already heavily utilize the SimplyPrint API to automate tasks like starting print jobs, I prefer an API-driven approach over manual UI interactions.

Currently, the workflow of using the mobile app to manually select a printer and then assign a filament spool involves too many taps and takes too much time at this scale. Since all my incoming filament spools already get barcoded in your system, it would be a massive efficiency boost if printers could also be assigned a unique barcode/QR code within SimplyPrint.

My dream workflow looks like this:

Scan the physical barcode on the printer.

Scan the barcode on the filament spool.

The filament is instantly assigned to that specific printer as the active spool.

Ideally, I would love to build and execute this entirely via the API. A dedicated endpoint where I can simply push a payload containing the printer_barcode and the spool_barcode to instantly link them would be incredible. This would allow for a completely seamless, physical “scan-and-go” operation directly on the shop floor using standard barcode scanners, without needing to navigate the app UI at all.

Is something like this already on your roadmap, or could this be considered for a future update? I’d love to hear your thoughts on this.

Best regards,

Manuel

Hi Manuel! :)

Thanks for the detailed suggestion!

Good news: this is actually already possible with our API today! :D

I think the best approach here would be to handle the scanning logic on the integration side, rather than introduce a dedicated API endpoint specifically for accepting two barcodes.

Our API already has everything needed:

• /resolve/FindBySearch – takes a scanned QR/barcode value and resolves it to the corresponding printer or filament spool.
• /filament/Assign – assigns a filament spool to a printer, using the printer ID, spool ID, and extruder number.

The QR codes we already generate for filament spools contain the necessary identifiers, and you can create printer QR codes using their SimplyPrint printer IDs (or printer URLs).

We’re also working on a “Generate labels” feature for printers, coming soon, so you won’t have to generate those yourself either!

The workflow would essentially be:

1. Scan the printer’s barcode.
2. Scan the filament spool’s barcode.
3. Your integration resolves the two identifiers and sends the assignment request to SimplyPrint.
4. Done! The spool is now assigned to that printer.

For example, once you’ve obtained the IDs, the actual assignment is just one API request:

curl -X POST \
  "https://api.simplyprint.io/123/filament/Assign?pid=5123&fid=21812" \
  -H "X-API-KEY: YOUR_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"extruder":{"21812":0}}'

So you don’t need to build the actual assignment logic yourself — that’s already handled by SimplyPrint. You’d just need a small script or application that listens for the two barcode scans and makes the API calls.

I’ve also put together a small Node.js example demonstrating exactly this workflow, which you could use as a starting point!

You can find the API documentation here:
https://apidocs.simplyprint.io/

Hope this helps! If you are aware tha tthis can be done, but you’re hoping for an even easier way to do it, or a no-code-way to do it, that’s another case entirely of course, and we’d be happy to entertain that idea; but when “API” is mentioned, we usually figure that people will do some code that wraps it.