Teacher here, I would like to look at a live feed / cam on my computer as the laser is working so I dont accidentally burn down my school. Cutter has been great so far! But I just like the extra security of having a live feed.
Anyone do this? I dont want something too in depth, just something i can put in / on top of lid with little effort to see. That has a decent live feed.
Any ideas?
It’s here in the forum, a little searching would have found it, but knowing what terms to look for is the trick.
“Stream camera” found a bunch.
So sift through those.
Then try searching amazon/google for “standalone webcam”. There are tons of options.
I will say though that to me the one to get is the pan/tilt wyze camera.
$30 and it does everything.
I’ve tried a couple but the one I prefer is this one:
You can watch it on your phone.
I use the wyze cam to monitor the laser too. nice little camera for $30. www.wyze.com
Have a look at this video- it’s for a CNC but Winston speaks about monitoring as well tools to resolve.
Plus if you have an old cell phone he has a cool monitoring solution that’s free.
Remember that even if you have a camera on the laser, the camera may not pick up anything until it is too late. Several users that have reported fire damage have said they were in the next room and by the time they got to the Glowforge it had been pretty much destroyed. I will never run my GF without being in the same room. If I am engraving I will relax a little, i.e. sit on a chair and read a book, but while cutting I am next to the machine watching the whole time. There is enough risk even with Proofgrade material that I don’t take the chance. If I were in a commercial building or school it would be even more important for me to have someone there at the laser to act at the first sign of issues. GF cuts are usually not long enough for the monitoring time to be that odious.
Ditto that one for me, too. For the price, it really works great.
Wyze works for me too! I can watch the GF remotely from work while my kids/wife cut things.
But my recommendation was specifically for the pan and tilt model. It’s only $10 more and much more useful.
Yes spot on! Way more utility for not much more cost. One of those things to get even if you don’t think you need that feature.
(Kind of like Pro vs Basic 
)
I use a baby video monitor that has a dedicated screen so I don’t have to tie up my phone or keep switching back and forth to the video feed on my computer while I’m multitasking.
I know you want a simple solution but there are some pretty interesting solutions that give you a platform to build on.
You could get by fairly well with a Raspberry Pi and camera. You can set it up to run Octoprint and that has the camera control ready to go. That gives you a whole computing platform to do other things with instead of a one task tool, it is a multi-tasker. And that would be how you would control that 3D printer you are now going to want to get to go with your Glowforge.
You can get some Canakit bundle and add a camera. That’s what I do. It will allow you to record some time elapse.
That is, if you want to get into running Linux and deeper into computing systems.
Always challenging I guess in a school environment when you are adding network devices.
Oh, I do like the gooseneck idea…
Ditto on Wyze - it’s a little buggy in that I can hit the connect button with the base when turning the camera - which requires me to delete and then disconnect the camera from the app, but as that’s like a 1 minute process it’s not a big deal (plus I’ve gotten better about not pressing the tiny button!)
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