Camera randomly not working for a few days then works again?

Beyond the Manual
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I dont really know why this is but when I first got my laser, I have camera issues of the laser not taking photos of the bed, so it’d be stuck in centering hell forever. Glowforge had actually sent me a replacement cable.
Weirdly after about 3 days of not touching the laser, it worked again, so I never installed the new cable.
Flash back to now, Same problem, so I used the replacement cable, still didnt work. So I ordered a second cable and prepared to struggle. After waiting for the cable I decided to just turn on the laser just to check. It worked now. After waiting days and cursing about the cable it randomly worked again.
Does anyone know why this keeps happening? Thoughts?

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Sounds like a wire in the cable is probably cracked/broken and sometimes it connects. You might try taping areas where it bends/moves to see if you can solidify the random connection…

3 Likes
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Could be the usual fidgety about its conversation with the gf servers. The WiFi chips are claimed to not have been the best. Things interfere with them fairly routinely.

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I don’t know if it’s still the case, but awhile ago you could have trouble if you didn’t wait for the Glowforge to complete the cool down (including the ticking sound you get after each run) before opening the lid. I always wait for that, and have never had a problem. You might give it a try if you haven’t been doing this.

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This is a classic example of a wifi connection issue. The GF does not have a very strong wifi antenna and does not play well with some other wifi devices that it has to share a connection with. Sometimes it just a matter of rebooting your wifi router to make things work. Sometimes you may need to find the offending wifi device (Apple TV, wireless security camera, doorbell camera, etc) and turn it off. Sometimes people have had to reconfigure their router to use different channels so neighbors wifi devices don’t interfere. I would e-mail GF and ask them to look at your machines logs to see if your connection strength is weak or not.

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I found this just before the black cable died, A bad connection is still a connection, but it gets hotter than usual and eventually dies.