Cheap Camera for Rostock Max

thingiverse

I wanted to attach a camera to my Rostock Max V2 after upgrading with a Raspberry Pi 2 running OctoPrint. Since I only use this for remotely monitoring print jobs and not producing high-quality movies, I chose the Fosmon Technology "5.0 Megapixel USB 2.0 Webcam with Flexible Goose Neck and Microphone" that costs less than $8 on Amazon. The camera module in this webcam is fairly good quality, but it doesn't support mjpeg streaming. That's fine for what I need. The chassis that comes with the camera, however, is very poor quality. I could probably make a better one by heating leftover plastic with a lighter and shaping it with a rock. So I made my own chassis. The only parts from the original product that I kept are the USB cable, the metal gooseneck, and the camera module itself. You will need some soldering skills to disconnect the USB cable from the camera module and then reconnect it. Additionally, you'll need four small screws to hold everything together. Finally, you might want to replace the stock lens on the camera with something that has a much shorter focal length, probably less than 3mm. As it is, the stock lens has a field of view of around 60 degrees, which doesn't show very much.