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Bambuddy Appliance

The Bambuddy Appliance is a Raspberry Pi 5 image with Bambuddy already installed and configured. You write it to a memory card, walk through a setup wizard in your browser, and start adding printers. There is no Docker to install, no compose file to edit, and no cloud account to create.

You supply the hardware. The appliance is sold as an image download plus an annual subscription, from October 2026 — nothing is shipped, and the Raspberry Pi is yours rather than rented.

It runs the same Bambuddy you would install yourself — same features, same AGPL licence, same local-only operation. What the appliance adds is everything around Bambuddy: first-boot bring-up, a captive-portal WiFi setup, an admin panel for the box itself, health-checked container upgrades with automatic rollback, and an A/B operating system that can fall back to the copy that worked.

Who it's for

You want it to just work

Flash one card, answer four questions, and skip the self-hosting entirely. Updates are tested together and undo themselves, and support comes from the person who builds it.

You already self-host

You probably don't need this. A Docker install gives you the same Bambuddy. The appliance is about the box, not the software.

Bambuddy stays Bambuddy

The application on the appliance is the ordinary AGPL-3.0 Bambuddy container from ghcr.io/maziggy/bambuddy. You can inspect it, replace it, or run it somewhere else. The appliance wrapper — the wizard, the admin panel, the CLI — is separately licensed, and it never restricts what the AGPL grants you.

What you need to buy

Four parts, all of them stocked by every Raspberry Pi dealer.
Computer Raspberry Pi 5, 4 GB 8 GB for a large fleet
Power The official 27 W USB-C supply Undervoltage shows up as dropped printers, not as an error
Cooling The official Active Cooler The box runs continuously; a throttled Pi looks like slow software
Storage microSD, 32 GB minimum 64 GB recommended, endurance-rated if you can

A Raspberry Pi 4 will not work

The appliance keeps two copies of its operating system and switches between them, so an update that fails can fall back to the one that worked. That layout needs the Pi 5's bootloader. On a Pi 4 the card may simply never start, with nothing on screen to explain why.

Why 32 GB is a floor, not a suggestion

The two operating-system copies and their boot partitions claim about 21 GB before any of your data is stored, so a 16 GB card cannot hold the image at all. A 64 GB card leaves roughly 38 GB for prints, models and history.

What the appliance adds

  • Guided first boot. No display or keyboard needed. Plug in ethernet, or join the appliance's own Bambuddy-Setup WiFi network and the setup page opens by itself.
  • Its own admin panel on port 8001, separate from Bambuddy, so you can still fix the box when Bambuddy is down.
  • Health-checked upgrades. The Bambuddy container upgrade pulls, starts, and waits for a health check — and rolls back automatically if the new version doesn't come up.
  • Secondary IP aliases, one per virtual printer that needs its own address on your LAN.
  • Tailscale, ready to sign in from the panel, so you can reach the box and its virtual printers from anywhere without opening a router port.
  • A password of its own. Every card generates a unique appliance password on its first boot, before SSH is allowed to accept a connection.
  • A factory reset from the panel or over SSH, returning you to a fresh setup wizard.

Start here

Quick Start

Power on, run the wizard, reach Bambuddy. Fifteen minutes.

Admin Panel

The four tabs: Dashboard, Network, Updates, Diagnostics.

Command Line

bambuddy-appliance — everything the panel does, over SSH.

Updates & Backups

Two upgrade lanes, what a backup covers, and what it doesn't.

Registration

What a partner-built unit sends home, and why a downloaded one sends nothing.

Recovery

Factory reset, lockouts, and what to try when it won't come up.

How to get one

The appliance goes on sale in October 2026 as an image download plus an annual subscription: Personal at €79/year for non-commercial use, Business at €249/year for commercial use with a named support channel and an agreed response time. One subscription covers one appliance, whatever number of printers you point it at.

If the subscription lapses, the appliance keeps working exactly as it is. What stops is updates and support, not the software you already have.

Leave your email on bambuddy.cool to hear when it is available, and read the printed quick start first — it is the full setup guide, and it costs nothing to find out whether this is something you want to do.

If you would rather build your own, everything Bambuddy needs is in the Docker installation guide. The appliance carries no exclusive features and never will.