2023-11-03 - camera light for print monitoring

i use camera to record prints. the reason being, that i'm often away from printer, when it's working. yet when print fails, it's very insightful to make sure one can understand what happened in that critical moment that lead to it.

my camera setup worked nice for some years. it even has it's own IR lighting, to make sure it can see in the dark. that's all great. the problem is that due to my printer location, camera is facing window… and i'm printing on the mirror… and you guessed it – there are times of a day, where direct or reflected sun light makes camera to decrease sensitivity and then whole print is under-lighted, causing it to be too dark to actually see anything. this forced me to keep lights on when printing during day. that's sub-optimal.

having some time to spare and some spare parts from past projects, i've added 3x17cm strips of bright LEDs, to illuminate the print, from the “right direction”.

how it works? well – too good. ;) when cover was black and printing in dark filaments, it was good. however now that my hotend cover is no longer black and i often print in white PLA, there's too much reflections, making print hard to see.

so in next days i'll likely add a potentiometer with the PWM control of lighting, to make sure it can be adjusted to actual demand at hand.