You made it look easy! Took me like 2 hours to get it working. At first, I could not get it to find a port. I bumbled my way though it though and got it working nicely! Your video was a great help though.
Great video! Another great option for the software is ESP Home, which you can then also flash the ESP board and program it over their web interface. Its a fantastic open source project with crazy good documentation.
There are also other ESP32-Cam software (most based on this example code) that can allow two streams since the ESP32 has two cores. I find this is useful for octoprint use as well as a quick check on things. Some have better "wifi" setup and connection. BUT, this is at least a great entry point to get someone started, and YES - for more than one or two printers to monitor, this is way better than generic USB web cams to a separate computer (or the one running klipper, etc). I enjoy these more than the live streaming.
Can you point me to this 'other SP32-Cam software'? Cause my experience with these modules is that the Wifi connection is not very reliable, at least with the software featured in this video
That's a LOT of work (and extra expenses). I recently bought two A10 1080p wireless cameras on AliExpress for USD$3.99 each. Connected no problem to my smartphone, tablet, or computer via WiFi. Runs on 5V USB. Also allows for a TF card, up to 64GB. The whole camera, excluding the tiny pivot stand, is about the size of a ping-pong ball, and weighs less than a golf ball. With a magnet or clamp it can be mounted wherever I want it, and with a power bank I can power it without cables. Easy peasy!
Yeah, but I'm pretty sure they don't have a streaming address that you can input in Octoprint in order to have an easy all in one app experience, and also to use the timelapse and spaghettis detector octoprint plugins.
Guys you don't need a link, aliexpress is filled with 3$ mini wifi IP cameras, though the A10 for that price is probably a knockoff but still usable for monitoring, if you don't mind installing out of store apps, a horrible image quality and you place them outside an enclosure because they have small lipo batteries that could catch fire.
@@freeemailssuck6848 I did provide a link and the comment was promptly deleted. Then I re-posted the comment without the link, but with instructions on how to access the link. That appears to also have been deleted. Try posting a link and see for yourself!
One thing about ESP-32 CAM modules is the orientation of the camera varies with vendors. I have one that I have the board oriented horizontally where as another I have to have the board orientated vertically. In both cases the image will be in landscape orientation. I have several servos from planes I no longer fly and decided to use two of them to add tilt and pan to one of my cameras which works very well except the resolution is fixed within the code. There are several people that have posted code and instructions for doing this with the ESP-32 CAM. I used the version by Rui Santos.
Anet a8. My first 3d printer. Didn't touch one for 3 years after this disaster of a 3d printer. Lucky it didn't burn the house down, as it did with others. Change the psu as soon as possible.
One application idea I can immediately think of is to use it as stealthburner nozzle cam and get power from the can board on the toolhead! I’m so excited! But I want hi-res and hi frame rate, is it limited by the camera module or the chip? or the WiFi speed?
Thanks, I have them on order (you didn't link the Amazon items...) I should have it updated this weekend! I think I can power them from the display board on my SV06.
Yeah, This works..until it doesn't.. I used various ESP32CAM modules with this same sketch, and it does not hold Wifi connection for long, at least, not reliably. (was trying to setup a 24/7 surveillance system with these) There is a 'fix' to the sketch that makes it automatically reconnect Wifi when connection is lost, but it hasn't been very successful in all my cases.. If anyone has a real fix for this let me know. I could just be a hardware flaw in these modules? So if you only want to monitor your printer with your phone, you're better of buying a cheap Chinese $10 webcam with it's own phone app, that works more reliably..
Very cool. I run klipper on my mini pc with ubuntu OS so I just use webcams. This is a pretty nice add-on for cheap. And I believe you can use some of the other IO pins on the esp32 to control lighting etc. Good video thanks for sharing!
Have tried for 2 days now and won't go past 48% before failure. I did everything you did in the video. Even followed and did when the walk through said and wont work. Not sure what I'm doing wrong.
Super easy to set up but I recommend to get esp32 with ipex output because that on board antenna is almost useless. I'm sitting 1 meter away from my router and have problems with good streaming.
My ESP32 cams seem to be crapped, they won't flash the rom properly. I got the same model as you, I've heard some of them from about 3 years ago were bad batches. Unless someone here resolved trouble with flashing the rom? Maybe I can get a better result trying to follow your guide here for this case use, I'll try again
@@random_user_2023 If you look in the English Prusa MK4 forum at User Mods you will find a post ESP32 Cam Support. johnyHV has written a post there. I followed these instructions.
What budget friendly camera do you recommend for time lapses ? I was looking for RPi cam v3 but CSI cables are short for my Voron. And also i use Manta m8p with CB1 so no CSI camera module for me.
In my personal experience and also a friend i talked to had the same experience, if you look at the esp32 boards wrong, they will fry themselves. I fried 3 on one project and i’m almost completely certain it was just from static discharge. They seem to have a lot less safeties built into them than an arduino or pi. But great budget wifi boards nonetheless
Nice. I use mine with Octoprint inside my enclosure, I power it with a 2$ dc-dc stepdown board from a 12v power supply that powers the enclosure LEDs. I print ABS so my enclosure hovers around 50c, never had a problem with it.
You can get a m5stack CAMS3 Unit for 15 dollars. How much faster is and ESP32-S3 compared to the original which this thing has? It can do time lapses, it can even do short videos. The software you need is pre-installed and it's in a case form factor. Also, the ESP32-S3 is the MCU used in Bambu's P line of printers. How they got a 3D printer working on a 5 dollar microprocessor is beyond me but it can be a voice assistant so it's a LOT faster. Also, Fly Pi2 from Mellow 3d is great for running Klipper or repeat, it has a 12/24v power input, an SPI and FPC output for small touchscreens and HDMI touchscreens, and a CAN bus. All for 30 bucks. It has some no flash boot function also.
Neat. I think Mainsail also has an option for an IP camera. Another contender for cheap Webcam is to salvage one out of an old dead laptop. My printer has one out of an Fujitsu Laptop form 2012. Usually i would say its pretty easy to do, as most of these cameras run just USB protocol. Where you have to probe out GND and Power with multimeter and take a guess at D+ D-, and if you guessed wrong just switch the data lines and try again. Juts solder on an USB cable and be done with it. But i tried that with some more recent laptop webcams and most newer than 2016-ish have microphones and so on bundled on that little camera PCB and are more hit or miss if they actually work without an drivers and are fiddley as they got more than 4 wires coming of them. But if anyone got a old laptop and an USB cable there might a free printer cam in there.
My first 3d printer was an Anet A6 (still in the workshop)... I removed the acrylic frame and used aluminium profiles. Now i yse an Elegoo Neptune 3 Plus.
Thanks for the informative video. You should go back and count how many times you say (Go Ahead). Its likely in the hundreds. I think you used it every other sentence.
I'm sick of idiots bashing this machine who clearly have never owned one. The reason some people had fires is because they did not assemble the machine according to the manual and left the hotend wires hanging down unsupported. Complete user error. The A8 is an absolute workhorse of a machine stock and yet infintely modable if desired. I still have my early model from back when they came with printed parts. Even today I would trust it over any other machine I have ever owned. And I've owned a few. Fun fact, the only fire I ever had was a Prusa MK2 and that WAS because of design error. And I wasn't the only one it happened to. When I showed them they didn't want to know me and even deleted my account. I fixed the machine, made it safe and sold it. To this day I've never touched a Prusa since and I never will.
Ive finaly managed to get it set up, I had to download a USB driver for it to find it. But the lag is just painful and not really much use. Is there anything I can do to reduce it and have a picture big enough to actualy see?
I just set one of these up and everything looked to working as it should except that the frame rate is stupid slow regardless of the resolution and the video feed disappears after a few minutes. What did I do wrong?
How do you find it running long term? I did the same a couple of years ago and I found it got really hot when it was streaming constantly to the point where it shut itself off after a day or so. I ended up just turning it on as I did a print hoping it would last the day. Any longer prints I couldn't use it at all.
Watching this while my Anet A8 is printing even more upgrades loudly in the corner... Never has failed me yet. Btw... It kinda grosses me out seeing your A8 with the protective paper still on 😂
After you mentioned this on stream I decided to order one and your software is so much better than the one I found by searching so will be updating mine asap.
There is an onscreen list of downsides near the end of the video, as for my testing, I have a wifi router in the room with the printers so I myself didnt see any issues, even when connecting it to the wifi in my house it was still usable, although ya, i could see having a lot of walls or a far away router would be an issue
@@CanuckCreator I love the small set up there is even a print that u can attach to the bed of the printer but I couldn't get a stable connection.....xfinity mesh network with a pretty decent signal strength.....but i do know there is an external wifi antenna that I could get but haven't. grabbed c110 topo instead.
Anyone know if you can do this without having to have a separate PC sharing the stream with PrusaConnect? Is the ESP32 cam able to take video and upload to PrusaConnect so I don't have to have a PC using OBS to capture the RTSP as a virtual camera then upload to PrusaConnect?
If you look in the English Prusa MK4 forum at User Mods you will find a post ESP32 Cam Support. johnyHV has written a post there. I followed these instructions
you CAN import an IP camera feed into mainsail yes, however, at that point you may be better off with just a cheap webcam because you already have the RPI equivalent and everything else installed in the printer
Thank you. Can you be more thorough next time. Show us how to add it in Octoprint, which plugin to use there, is it possible to start and stop it from the plugin whiout accessing the ip of the camwebserver directly, how to deal with it getting hot.... many things are left out.
I just bough a cheap Wyze camera. They are around $25 but I found them on sale for under $20 several times. You can view them from anywhere. All you need to do is plug it in and hook it up to your WiFi. None of this programming junk.
www.amazon.com/DORHEA-Bluetooth-Development-4-75V-5-25V-Raspberry/dp/B09Z6J9RK5?th=1 or 5 for 32 Just depends on your location and how many ya want, but they can easily be found for even cheaper on aliexpress if you dont mind the wait
Tried this a few weeks ago and it was not a worthwile expierence. ESP was crashed every time I went to 720p or beyond, quality slider was also a quick access to crash function. Lowering quality beyond anything you´d want to look at it sometimes magaed to get a 720p still, but never more then a few frames of video before the esp went offline. All on a WROVER ESPCam Board with extra SPI RAM and all the goodies, connected to a Meanwell 5V3A power supply. Also the image quality - These Omnivison sensors are 2006 era flip phone sensors. They look bad in daylight, but under a small artificial light, the kind you have in or pointed at your printer, it is more noise than picture at all. They might be cheap, but the jank and the "almost older than me" image quality isnt even worth the few bucks youre paying for that imo...
Here ya go, 5 ESP32 w/ Cam AND usb micro board for 32 bucks Math isnt my strongest, but i THINK thats under 10 bucks each www.amazon.com/DORHEA-Bluetooth-Development-4-75V-5-25V-Raspberry/dp/B09Z6J9RK5
