Pi Zero W Camera Case

thingiverse

This project requires a Raspberry Pi Zero W paired with a 5 Megapixel spy camera, which I use to monitor prints in my 3D printer. Before assembling the camera, twist the lens counterclockwise using small pliers while holding the base with another tool to break the dot of glue that holds it in place and focus at infinity. With the camera connected to the Pi Zero and folded on the back of the printed circuit board, apply a dot of superglue to the four corners of the lens base and push the camera lens through the hole so that the base is flush with the case and the lens can be rotated from outside. Next, secure the board to the case using four 3 mm self-threading screws or regular M3x0.5 screws and push the lid onto the case. I printed both the case and the lid with solid infill and no supports, but first, rotate the lid by 180 degrees from its position in the STL rendering. The slits on the lid allow for sufficient convection air cooling so that the Pi Zero W operates around 55C inside the printer, although I also attached a small adhesive heat sink to the CPU. The Pi Zero W runs headless with Raspbian Stretch Lite and MJPG-Streamer using the native Broadcom camera driver and streams 1280x720 30 fps without any issues, consuming around 40% CPU. After placing the camera in the printer with your chosen mount, rotate the lens counterclockwise from its original position to focus on infinity and then adjust it to focus on the center of the printer bed, which was over 50 degrees in my case. The MJPG-Streamer process starts at boot time using a user cron job, making the video stream available soon after powering the Pi Zero wirelessly. I'm glad you like this project!