As I mentioned in one of my Twitter threads, it’s great to have a remotely monitor-able 3D Printer Cam, so you can keep an eye on a print-in-progress while doing other work.

My printing is done in another room from where I do design, email, and other routine stuff – not far away, but far enough I don’t want to keep walking back and forth to check on a long print.  (Some of my parts take longer than an hour to print.)

I had purchased a TrendNet TV-IP651WI camera from Amazon back in April to monitor some bird’s nests in our back yard, but before I could get the camera all set up, a wind-storm put an end to their propagation plans, and I found myself with a spare camera on my hands.

Earlier this week I decided to try setting it up to view my Lulzbot TAZ 4 3D printer, and it’s working out pretty nicely. This particular camera is a full PTZ (pan-tilt-zoom), and though I hooked it up to the router (the room where the 3D printer is set up is also where our wireless hookup and main ink-jet printer are located), it is also wireless. TrendNet has SecurView Pro software which lets you capture and monitor one or more cameras, which for me is nice, since I also have TrendNet cameras monitoring the front and back yards. With my 4-monitor setup on my main computer, I can throw the remote camera on one of the upper screens, and be editing parts in FreeCAD on a lower monitor, with plenty of real estate left for my Ring Central soft phone, my iTunes player for background music, and Outlook for Email.

TrendNet camera on the left, Lulzbot 3D printer on the right

View of the camera (top, just right of center) from the bed of the 3D printer.

Remote view of my 3D printer from the TrendNet SecurView application