Discussion of October 2024 Update

[shea]

Discussion thread for:

October 2024 Update

I’ve been thinking a lot about our vision of a world where anyone can print anything. It’s a big, bold vision – one that’s been guiding us for almost a decade now! We’re always hard at work expanding that vision for Glowforge owners, and our latest initiative is all about doing that and reaching the folks that don’t yet have access to the magic of Glowforge. Your friends are going to want to hear about this! Our marketing team, always on the lookout for ways to spread the Glowforge magic, thoug…

[deirdrebeth]

Love that they’re giving ethernet a shot. I hope that will make some of the folks who decry the internet something to look forward too!

[tjones]

@deirdrebeth

decry the internet

Will it though? I admit, I am not the tech guy. If you give me tech, then I can figure it out, but I can’t “idea” tech of my own. We will still need the internet for the servers, right? All an ethernet port does is allows you a stable network in house. Although, I guess if someone comes up with a way to replace the servers, then the ethernet could work for a LAN of some sort.

[shop]

and yet… and yet… this sounds like the “ethernet adaptor” is really a mini wifi system that the internal machine wifi connects to, then you connect the ethernet to your wired network.

which means there’s STILL wifi. it’s just not your wifi. this feels about 10% of the way to being actual hardwired ethernet. and one more potential failure point.

if we’re going to get wifi, it needs to be hardwired into the motherboard for the machine, not creating another wifi network.

[wesleyjames]

Some of us still have port connections they could have retooled but whatever…when they squashed its utility by pulling the physical port(usb?) kinda killed that idea all together anyway.

[henryhbk]

Yeah, in 2024 the ability to jam an ethernet port onto a thing is so minimal as to be somewhat absurd. Every one of my 3D printers (Prusa and FormLabs), my Tormach CNC mill, X-Carve are all directly on ethernet in the house, now that Prusa has PrusaConnect spooler on each printer since the Mini. So much more reliable. Obviously performance isn’t that critical here (since it can only gulp so much data down to use anyway, it’s not like my prusa printers which sometimes I use the PrusaConnect cloud connection and the job is hundreds of MB is size and then speed matters since the printer downloads the entire file onto local USB storage and then prints. But in the shop where a ton of things are likely spewing RF ethernet is just going to deliver the packets rather than wifi which is eventually going to get it there but take a while due to collisions on the wifi (yes I have wifi 6, but still).