@dc42 said in Feature Request: Track filament usage per spool in software:
The complicated part is defining exactly how this should work. Some of the issues are:
How exactly should it interact with the existing filament management system? For example, should it work at all if you do not use the filament management system? Should it track offline spools as well as whatever spools are currently loaded? How will you tell it that you have started a new spool? Or that you have loaded a part-used spool? How often should it update the usage data on the SD card? If it updates it too often, it will wear out the SD card too quickly.
It could work as a very simple plugin for DWC.
It should not interact with anything except the filament usage data of a running print job.
Users can add multiple counters. One per spool.
A counter is defined by some name + length of a full spool.
Once enabled it monitors filament usage until a pending print job needs more filament.
A warning should be shown in this case.
The SD card write frequency should be user defined.
It is for manual use. If you forget to change the counter you have to start from scratch and correct the counter values on sd card manually.
The analogy of a stop watch is quite helpful.