Self-hosted print management for Elegoo
Your Elegoo sets the ceiling: the Neptune 4 runs Klipper for full capability, while the Centauri Carbon uses a beta native provider without file inventory.
Elegoo owners land in two different places when they try to run their machines from a self-hosted library, and the split has nothing to do with which printer is newer or more expensive. It is about what firmware the machine runs.
The Neptune 4 family runs Klipper, so it connects the way every other Klipper machine does and gets everything. The Centauri Carbon runs Elegoo’s own firmware, so it needs a dedicated integration that is younger, thinner, and still labelled beta. If you own both, expect one printer in your list to do noticeably more than the other.
Neptune 4, Pro, Plus, and Max
These use the Moonraker provider through a guided setup preset rather than a separate Elegoo implementation, which is the right call: a second copy of the same Klipper protocol would be a second place for bugs to live.
What that buys you is the full stable capability set. Live status over a WebSocket, upload from the library, starting a file you just uploaded or one already on the printer, pause, resume, cancel, remote file inventory, and print history import that matches Moonraker’s own records back onto your models. Measured filament and duration come back from Moonraker too, which is what makes real per-print cost possible instead of a slicer estimate.
Setup is ordinary Moonraker setup: the printer’s address, port 7125, and a test connection. Connecting PrintStash to Moonraker and Klipper covers it, and nothing in that guide is Elegoo-specific because nothing needs to be.
Centauri Carbon and Carbon 2
These connect through PrintStash’s native Elegoo provider: SDCP over a WebSocket on the original Carbon, authenticated MQTT on Carbon 2 with LAN Only enabled. Both give you live status, temperatures, progress, print controls, and, since v0.11.3, G-code upload from the library.
The gaps are worth planning around rather than discovering. There is no remote file inventory, so PrintStash cannot show you what is already on the printer. There is no print history import and no measured filament, so cost falls back to the slicer’s estimate. And the upload path has one partial hardware report on the original Carbon and none on Carbon 2, which is a thin basis for unattended work. Sending prints to a Centauri Carbon goes through the setup and the caveats properly.
What running both looks like
One library, one set of models, both machines in the same printer list, and different actions available on each. The library side does not change with the printer: slices attach to their source model as revisions with the slicer settings parsed out of them, outcomes and a recommended revision per model, collections and tags, and a statistics view over completed prints.
The fleet queue will route across both, but it routes by how busy each machine is, not by whether the file suits it. A Neptune 4 slice and a Centauri slice are different files for different machines, so keep them as separate revisions with the machine in the label and pick the target deliberately. Reproducible prints across a fleet covers why that matters more than it sounds.
What is not supported
Elegoo’s resin printers are not in scope. The Mars and Saturn lines are not supported providers, and their sliced output is not among the formats PrintStash indexes, which are STL, 3MF, OBJ, STEP, STP, G-code, and BGCODE. A resin workflow needs a different tool, and no amount of configuration will change that here.
PrintStash also does not install or update Elegoo firmware and sends no vendor-specific maintenance macros. It is a library that talks to printers, not a device manager.
Which one to buy, if you are choosing
If self-hosted software is a real requirement rather than a preference, the Klipper machine wins on capability today, and it is not close: file inventory, history import, and measured filament all come from the Moonraker side. The Centauri Carbon is the better printer out of the box for many people, and the integration is improving, but you are choosing a beta path with less to work with. That tradeoff is the whole subject of which printer ecosystem has the best self-hosted software, which looks at the same question across every brand.