Watchful Pi....I mean Eye.....

[Scott Shepherd]

Put this system in place after a recent scare. Now we can watch what's happening from anywhere in the room. The HDTV is on a swivel bracket so you can rotate it 180 degrees to see it from anywhere in the room.

It's done with a Raspberry Pi and Pi Camera, displaying in real time to the HDTV.

It's been running for about a week and so far, I'm really happy with it. The focal length is a little small so it clips off part of the table, but overall, I think it'll do what we want, and that's just to make sure we don't get caught not paying close attention. It's also providing some fascinating video of cutting. If you wanted to, you could have the Raspberry Pi record the video, but we're currently just streaming it, not recording it. The next step is to put a couple of temperature sensors inside the system and have that displayed on the same screen, along with alarms setup when temps are exceeded.

Maybe it'll spark someone's thoughts to do something better than we did.

Change the settings to HD to get a better video of it all.

[Tim Bateson]

Really cool Steve! I get memorized watching my engraver, throwing it up on a big screen is perfect.

[Ronald Erickson]

Scott, how is your laser so quiet? I realize there must be some noise cancelling happening in your video (or maybe the device you're filming with doesn't pick up on the higher frequency sounds of the laser cutting). However, the cooling fan on my 80w tube sounds as loud as a shop vac.

[Chris DeGerolamo]

Would it not give you a better picture of what the laser is precisely doing if you mounted the camera directly to the laser head itself?

Well done...great use of a RasPi.

[Scott Shepherd]

Would it not give you a better picture of what the laser is precisely doing if you mounted the camera directly to the laser head itself?

Well done...great use of a RasPi.

Already done that about a year ago. Vectoring works great, rastering gives you vertigo while watching

Ron, I don't know, I just push start and go with it. The frequency will make different sounds for sure. Low frequencies make more noise.

[Paul Williams from Nunavut]

That's a great idea. The only thing that I would want to change, perhaps, is the angle of the camera so that I would be looking slightly down onto the work, and not across it. But that's me. Thanks for the idea, sir.

[Scott Shepherd]

That's a great idea. The only thing that I would want to change, perhaps, is the angle of the camera so that I would be looking slightly down onto the work, and not across it. But that's me. Thanks for the idea, sir.

I'm still working on the angle Paul. I'm not thrilled with it now, but there's a magnetic switch right above it where I want to be. I originally started outside the laser, above it, looking down on the entire table, but there's a light fixture above the laser and the reflection of that on the lid makes it useless. So I kept moving it around more and more and it ended up inside the machine It really has shown some amazing video, especially when cutting 1/2" thick acrylic. You can see under the work and above the work and see when flare ups are happening under the work. It's very cool to watch.

I'll figure the ideal spot out as time goes on.

[Keith Winter]

Really nice Steve! What was the scare you speak of?

[Scott Shepherd]

Really nice Steve! What was the scare you speak of?

A fire. Toasted my tables, but didn't mess with the motion control system. And we watch over it like a hawk.

[Matt McCoy]

Did you install the Raspberry Pi inside the laser too?

Are you running a script?

[Scott Shepherd]

The Pi is outside the laser, with the cable for the camera running inside the laser through and access hole. Not running any script, it's just : raspivid -t -0 and that's it

[Matt McCoy]

The Pi is outside the laser, with the cable for the camera running inside the laser through and access hole. Not running any script, it's just : raspivid -t -0 and that's it

Very cool -- thanks.

[Don Corbeil]

Yes, very cool Scott... Is that a hardwired video stream or wireless? The picture quality looks really good, so I'm assuming it's hardwired.

[Scott Shepherd]

Hardwired Don. I have a 3m long cable that runs through the laser (it's a flat ribbon cable), that runs to the back of the machine, where the Pi is mounted. Then a long HDMI cable to go from that to the monitor. It is really, really clear. We went with 32" so it could be seen. I have opened a door that's about 10 feet away, and run our CNC router, which is about 25 feet from that door, and turned the monitor in that direction and I can stand at our router and see the laser running on the monitor. I don't normally do that, but I had a long running, non-fire hazard job that was on a tight deadline. I could see it finish up, pop up there, change parts, hit start, go back to running the router.

[Brian Leavitt]

Scott - I'm not real familiar with the Raspberry Pi. You just hook the Pi camera to the Pi, an HDMI cable between the Pi and TV, and it's good to go?

Could this be made to work to display video from three cameras on one TV, all at the same time??? I could certainly make use of something like that!

I'm comfortable with electronics, but coding is way above my head...