LulzBot Mini bed USB camera mount by sabi

Last crawled date: 3 years, 1 month ago

This a support for mounting a USB camera module onto the LulzBot Mini bed, so your camera moves back and forth with the bed, making a nice time-lapse of the printing. The design of this camera mount is optimized for weight and longitudinal robustness to avoid camera shake. You won't achieve that with a big/heavy USB camera or a GoPro.
The mount attaches to the aluminum bed plate (part PP-FP0054) using the same screw holes that hold the front left bed corner piece. The bed corner piece is printed in a flexible material, but the mount should be printed in a rigid material and goes on top and around of this bed corner.
This part is specific for the camera module ELP-USBFHD01M that you can buy online in many places. This USB camera is a 1080p that comes with several options for lenses and weights only 30g. I recommend the 2.8mm lens, which will give you a 92° horizontal field of view, enough to get the whole bed in the picture with moderate fish-eye effect (the module with the 2.8mm lens is ELP-USBFHD01M-L28). You need to break out the outer part of the camera's PCB with some pliers and use the 32x32mm inner board (the outer board is 38x38mm).
Alternative: I haven't tried it, but you could also use ELP's 720p module which has an outer PCB size of 32x32mm, and you would probably want the 2.1mm lens in this case for a 85° horizontal field of view since the sensor is smaller in this module (ELP-USB100W03M-L21). Check out this field of view calculator page for more details.
Installation
There are two M3 screws that hold the bed corner piece in place, and a third, longer M3 screw holding the silver washer on top of it. To install this mount, remove all three screws, place the piece on top of the bed corner and screw them back again. Using longer M3 screws is optional (it only takes 0.8mm extra) but not required.
To attach the camera module to the mount you can either use an M2.5 tap to thread the holes in the camera PCB (the existing hole is 2.3mm) or use M2 screws and nuts.