Still with the Raspberry Pi theme, for the last year or so I have been using Octopi to control both of my 3d printers. Octopi is the Raspberry Pi version of Octoprint, which allows a host computer to send instructions to and receive telemetry from a 3d printer. This is done through a web-based user interface, i.e. any device running a web browser on the same network as the printer can can simply navigate to 'http://<host name of computer running Octoprint>.local' or 'http://<ip address of computer running Octoprint>' and see an interactive web page which will let them control the printer and monitor its progress. If the Octoprint host has a webcam, that can be used to make time-lapse movies of the printing process.
For more details, see https://octoprint.org/
The two controlling my 3d printers connect to my wifi network, which works just fine whilst they're at home, if they were to be taken elsewhere then they'd need to be reconfigured to work on their own or on some other network. Recently, I built a system for a friend which used the same trick as the mustard tin music players and the lightwand - provide an access point with DNS and DHCP servers so that a browser-equipped device can connect to it's little network and provide a user interface just about anywhere.
See https://thepi.io/how-to-use-your-raspberry-pi-as-a-wireless-access-point/ for a guide on how to set up an access point.
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