mks-wifi-plugin VS ElegooNeptuneThumbnails-Prusa

If you want the thumbnail out of Orca I'd think you could take that code and port it to whatever and add it is a post processing script. You'd just need to find the base64 PNG in the gcode, decode it, and run it through your process to generate the funky thumbnail. There's some Python in here that does similar RGB bit shifting but I didn't look close enough to see where/if they differ: https://github.com/Jeredian/mks-wifi-plugin/blob/develop/MKSPreview.py .

No that's different than what I'm talking about, what you are referring to is a hardware upgrade, I'm referring to the software plugin for Cura that generates a compatible thumbnail for the mks tft screen, that same plugin will also allow you to connect cura to the hardware addon but even without that you need it installed.in cura if you want thumbnails. https://github.com/Jeredian/mks-wifi-plugin just above the install instructions is the relevant bit: "Get preview on 3D printer srceen when using MKS Robin TFT35 or MKS TFT35 LCD."

See https://github.com/Jeredian/mks-wifi-plugin/issues/171

Regular Cura doesn't add bitmaps to the gcode file. The option may be greyed out because the MKS plugin doesn't support a bitmap for your printer. You might be able to contact the developer of the plugin on Github and ask a question there.

This looks like it might even be closer to a full solution. It is built to find and parse the PNG and convert it into the MKS style: https://github.com/Molodos/ElegooNeptuneThumbnails-Prusa/blob/main/elegoo_neptune_thumbnails.py . I'm an M-series Mac so I can't easily test it since it seems to include x86 libraries only. It looks like the "new" model printers would be using the Qidi process. It might need changes relating to the thumbnail sizes as well.

A much easier proposition is to install Orca Slicer and forgo all of the above editing. You can also add the preview image of your prints using https://github.com/Molodos/ElegooNeptuneThumbnails-Prusa and adding a line to your post processing script field (process section on the other tab) that points to that executable like this: