I printed this a couple of days ago and am really happy with how it turned out. The knurling seems very clean and when closed properly, you basically can’t tell that it’s a container waiting to be opened up. It’s also neat that once you budge it open, it can open and close itself with just gravity to assist, proving that the printer did a good job on the screw portion of both pieces. I should check and see if the person that designed this has any other cool items to print.
I also set up a Raspberry PI and installed OctoPrint on it so I could control my printer wirelessly.
OctoPrint provides you with the ability to connect a camera to the Pi and then stream video of your prints or produce timelapses of prints. One of the popular models is the Logitech C920. I went on Amazon to see if I could order one and was shocked to see prices in the range of $200-$300 (that’s not a typo, two-hundred to three-hundred dollars). I didn’t see how one priced that high could possibly be the popular pick in a community known for just wanting to print their own parts.
Further interesting was Amazon told me I had ordered one a couple of years ago. I took a look at the order and it turns out I had only paid around $70 for it. Apparently they have been selling out due to COVID-19 and so people are jacking up the prices on them. I had no clue where the one I ordered was though. I used to work from home all the time so I’m pretty sure I bought it back in my consulting days and figured I’d gotten rid of it at some point.
A few days later, I remembered that I had random computer things stored in what I use as a foot stool when sitting at my desk. I opened it up, and sure enough, sitting in the corner of it was the Logitech C920 I’d bought way back whenever. So I hooked it up to the Pi, and it now I can stream my prints locally (allowing me to look at the printer from another room). I also installed The Spaghetti Detective, which is an OctoPrint plugin, and it uses deep learning to monitor my prints. If it thingk something has gone wrong, it will notify me and give me the option to cancel the print after looking at the stream. It’s pretty wild that this is all possible without a ton of effort on my part.
Anyhow, here is a not-too-impressive timelapse of me printing a simple cable clamp that helps keep the various cables around my Ender printer organized: