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.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=33uWTYtE9SI

[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? :D

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? :D

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...

[Scott Shepherd]

Yup, it's not much to it. You need to download the OS from onto a SD card (or micro), plug the camera and other stuff in, turn it on, type a couple of commands that are well documented, and you're set. You can't hook but one camera to each Pi, so you couldn't do 3 cameras with this setup.

I did it like this because I have about 8-10 Raspberry Pi's and probably more Arduino's sitting around. A customer owed me money and paid me Arduino's one time :D

There is no coding involved, unless you wanted there to be.

[Keith Winter]

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

I'm always worried about that when cutting, sorry to hear that happened to you. Glad your motion system is ok. What was cut that caught fire?

[Scott Shepherd]

I'm always worried about that when cutting, sorry to hear that happened to you. Glad your motion system is ok. What was cut that caught fire?

I had cut a lot of acrylic that had small holes in it, and they fell down into the honeycomb grid. I went to the next job which was 1/8" thick rowmark, and while cutting that, it set the acrylic scrap under the honeycomb on fire, that burned really hot until it caught the rowmark on fire. It was burning under the top surface. We looked at it and all was okay. 10-15 seconds later, it finally broke through the surface of the rowmark and was about the size of a small frying pan. A water bottle handled the fire really quickly, but the heat from the burning acrylic melted the rulers and buckled the stainless table, along with melting the honeycomb grid.

We were literally standing right there. It was that fast. No big deal. I trip to the automotive paint store, a few hours, and some parts, and it's as good as new :)

[Joe Walmer]

That is pretty neat I was looking into getting a Pi and using octoprint for my new laser. Looks like I could do something like this if I go that route.

[Joe Walmer]

Have you ever thought of installing some infrared and temp sensors to an alarm or laser shutoff? You could probably wire it into the door open circuit Got to put that Pi to some good use =)

[Scott Shepherd]

Have you ever thought of installing some infrared and temp sensors to an alarm or laser shutoff? You could probably wire it into the door open circuit Got to put that Pi to some good use =)

Temp sensors are already in the works Joe ;) Our Universal has a built in sensor, so we'll just go off that idea. Now, having witnessed an actual fire, I have a good idea on what's going to detect it better, what to use and where to put it. I'll update this thread as progress continues.

[Keith Winter]

I went ahead and bought a pi and camera myself after seeing this, I think it's a brilliant safety feature! Trying to mount it now, but I have not figured out where to place it so it won't be in the way and also how to run the cable through the machine to the outside. Mind posting a photo of how you ran the cable out the back of your laser and placement of the camera?

[Bill George]

So I have the newest Raspberry Pi and all the stuff, even came with a WiFi dongle for a USB port, so If I add the camera can I stream a wireless video to my cell phone? I suppose I can do some online searching but maybe the answer I get here will relate somewhat to lasers.

[David Somers]

Great idea Scott!

Can your TV handle PiP? If so, and since you have a couple of Pi's hanging around, how about a camera under the honeycomb to catch a fire down below like you experienced?

Also, you mentioned trying the camera outside the cover so you could catch the whole table in one image, but that glare from lights on the cover prevented that? How about a polarizing lens in front of the camera. An el cheapo would probably do it?

Great ideas!!!!!

Dave

[Matt Geraci]

I have no idea what a raspberry pi is but I like it!!!! Been looking at video monitored options for safety reasons myself. Thanks for sharing!

[Craig Matheny]

I use two security cameras and they go to 2 different monitors on our different desk and remote access any time.