We all know how this works. The moment you stop watching your 3D print’s progress is the moment that the “transporter accident” (my favorite slang for a failed print) happens.

Spaghetti Detective is a web-based AI that monitors your prints (via a webcam) and alerts you if a print goes south, allowing the print to be paused or stopped.

The service is free for casual users and $4/month for daily printer use. Basically, it monitors your print by looking for patterns of spaghetti on the print bed.

In this video, Thomas Sanladerer reviews Spaghetti Detective by testing out a number of print situations to see how effective the AI is. What he found is that it needs a lot of learning to be more accurate. He still thinks, given its free (and cheap) options, it’s a great way to at least be able to monitor your print from anywhere. And given that it’s open source and that you can get print-hours credit by feeding back info on your prints, he has hope for the future of the tech.

Spaghetti Detective is an OctoPrint plug-in and they are working on a featuring, now in Beta, that would allow you to access all of OctoPrint’s functions remotely.