I’ve posted my camera mount and holder for my OctoPi setup on Thingiverse.
Constructive criticism always welcome. Would love to see what you guys come up with too.
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This is awesome. I’m definitely going to give this a try. I’ve got Octopi running, but I hadn’t figured out how/where to mount the camera. Where are you mounting the pi?
The Pi is in a case tucked beside the y-axis behind the touchscreen. The aluminium case camouflages it pretty well, but you can still see the camera cable coming from the box. Here’s a clearer photo.
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I left a comment on the Thingiverse page with a suggestion: please add an option for a 180-degree swing of the arm. With the add-on enclosure for the Snapmaker, there’s very little room on the right side or front of the bed for the camera and lots of space to the left side of the bed. The touchscreen bracket would need to be removed to take advantage of that space, but the touchscreen is of very little use inside the enclosure anyway.
My only concern would be making sure the camera stays clear of the printing/engraving module when it moves over to the left side, but with a long enough arm, it should be avoidable.
Also, I plan to use IR cameras with the LEDs protruding from the sides, so the camera case would need to be redesigned to accommodate the extra thickness and have cutouts on the sides for the IR board. I may do that myself because the changes are pretty simple, even when importing an STL mesh into Fusion 360.
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I managed to get the base designed for a 180-degree swing and printed. I thickened the back wall by 2mm (and countersunk the mounting screw holes another 2mm) to compensate for losing the support on the side of the slot. The STL is attached.
PiCam_Mount_Base_180.stl (208.2 KB)
Looks happy, doesn’t he? 
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@TheBum good ideas on the modifications. I did design a 180 version of the swing arm attachment but decided too much of the view is blocked by the printer module, not the touchscreen. The hot end is closer to the right edge than the left edge where the fan is.
The arm is long enough to clear the bed from the side when deployed at 90 degrees. I actually wished I could make the arm shorter but I do not have a wide angle lens on the Pi cam. That’s the main reason why it is that long currently.
Unfortunately my enclosure will not ship until mid June so I will have to wait to see how I can modify or design a new Pi cam holder to work within the enclosure.
He sure does 
I may end up lowering the vertical part of the arm to be able to view under the module. I printed the long arm this morning, but haven’t had a chance to take it off the print bed and check it. I need to print out the fork anyway to get a better idea of the final height (I wish I had thought to print them together). The camera I ordered has manually adjustable focus, so I have some flexibility in how close to the bed to position it; the determining factor is whether I can get it out of the way of the printing module, either under or to the side, when the X axis is all the way to the left.
Once I’m done with these modifications, I’ll likely release them on Thingiverse as a remix of your design.
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I’m curious to see the modifications you will come up with. BTW, what camera are you using? I’m using the Pi Cam v1. I wish it had a wider FOV.
Sweet! This is what makes this community awesome.
This one: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B06XYDCN5N/
It’s on the UPS truck for delivery today, so I’ll soon see how well it works. The room with my printer is rather dark, so the IR should work well.
The camera case is going to have to be almost completely redone. The camera I’m using is centered on the four holes and requires that the camera be securely fastened to the IR LED board because that’s where the electrical power contacts are.
My suggestion is to look at Thingiverse and see if someone has already created a case for that type of camera. Use that as your base for your own design.
Like this one: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:434600
I looked, but apparently not well enough. I’ve already designed most of the case from scratch, including the conical divots for the fork. The only thing I don’t have is a front cover, so I may borrow that implementation.
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I went ahead and modified the existing model to support the fork. It saves having to design a front cover. I also added ledges under the IR LED boards to support them better; I may have to tweak the height of those ledges because I was going by memory. The mods add 8mm to the height and shouldn’t affect the other dimensions at all.
I’ll print it out tonight and see what happens.
That looks really nice. I would add flanges to the camera holder near where it attaches to the support fork to prevent the camera from falling forward because the setup looks top heavy.
Another approach is to widen the fork so it attaches to the camera holder on the sides of the 2 lights. That’ll make it more balanced.
Can’t wait to see how it all ties together.
It’s published.
https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2930131
As an accidental consequence of the design, the top arc on each fork arm rubs against the bottom of the screw block, making for a nice friction brake to prevent the joint from swiveling under the weight of the camera. It’s a lot more stable than I thought it would be.
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I modified the long arm to have a lower rise. The angle from the camera to the bed is much better now. I’ve added it to my Thing on Thingiverse.
The thinner version of the camera case back provides a nice snug fit for the camera.
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I discovered that there is enough room on the right side inside the enclosure for the camera to be swung over.
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That’s great news! I still have about a month before my enclosure arrives.
Hi guys, this is a great mount. I am modifying it to fit the Waveshare camera (RPi Camera (B), Adjustable-Focus) as I cannot find anything that fits on Thingiverse. Will post it once it is ready.