Cheap Camera for Rostock Max by DougLorenz

Last crawled date: 3 years ago

I wanted to add a camera to my Rostock Max V2 which I upgraded with a Raspberry Pi 2 running OctoPrint. Since I'm just using this to remotely monitor print jobs and not do any great cinematography, I decided to use an el-cheapo Fosmon Technology "5.0 Megapixel USB 2.0 Webcam with Flexible Goose Neck and Microphone", which sells for less than $8 on Amazon.
The camera module in this webcam is fairly good quality, but doesn't do mjpeg. That's ok for what I'm doing though. The chassis that comes as part of the camera however is absolute garbage. I could probably make a better chassis by heating leftover scrap plastic with a lighter and molding it by hitting it with a rock. So I made my own chassis.
The only parts I saved from the original product are the usb cable, the metal gooseneck, and the camera module itself.
You will need some soldering skills to remove and reconnect the USB cable from the camera module. You will also need four small screws to hold the whole thing together.
Finally, you will probably want to replace the stock lens on the camera with something with a much shorter focal length, probably less than 3mm. As it is, the stock lens has maybe a 60 degree field of view, which doesn't show a whole lot.