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Web Cam - snapshot

Some cameras expose single image snapshot under specific URL. we can use the ultimate power of curl command to fetch the image from the camera.

This is the preferred way to use web cams because right now Prusa Connect do not support streams, and thus there is no point in wasting CPU on that.

The best option to check what is the URL is in the camera manual, or if you open web UI of the camera and see the still image then right click on the image and select Inspect to see the URL for the image - copy that URL.

You should be able to test the stream locally with ffplay command.

For example, if your camera is reachable over address 192.168.0.20 and port 8001 under endpoint /snap.jpg then below command should show the image:

curl -vvv http://another-cam.local:8081/snap.jpg -o snap.jpg

then you should see in the output something like Content-Type: image/jpeg, then you are good - see snap.jpg in the folder you executed the command.

Create config for script

  • copy snapshot.dist as .env
  • in copied file .env replace token-change-me with the value of the token you copied
  • in copied file .env replace fingerprint-change-me with some random value, which is alphanumeric and has at least 16 chars (and max of 40 chars), for example set it to fingerprint-myprinter3-camera-3
  • in copied file .env replace your esphome device address and port in CAMERA_COMMAND_EXTRA_PARAMS
  • save edited file .env

Next, test config.

Real world example

esp32 with esphome

For more in-depth details see esphome snapshot.

I have esp32-wrover-dev board with camera + esphome + web ui for camera exposing snapshot frame on port 8081.

We can use curl to fetch it.

PRINTER_ADDRESS=127.0.0.1
PRUSA_CONNECT_CAMERA_TOKEN=redacted
PRUSA_CONNECT_CAMERA_FINGERPRINT=06f47777-f179-4025-bd80-9e4cb8db2aed
CAMERA_DEVICE=/dev/null
CAMERA_COMMAND=curl
CAMERA_COMMAND_EXTRA_PARAMS=http://esp32-wrover-0461c8.local:8081/ -o

Beagle Camera

This is not tested, I do not own such camera so hard to tell if this is right.

Camera URL for snapshot http://192.168.2.92/images/snapshot0.jpg so the config should be like below:

PRINTER_ADDRESS=127.0.0.1
PRUSA_CONNECT_CAMERA_TOKEN=redacted
PRUSA_CONNECT_CAMERA_FINGERPRINT=06f47777-f179-4025-bd80-9e4cb8db2aed
CAMERA_DEVICE=/dev/null
CAMERA_COMMAND=curl
CAMERA_COMMAND_EXTRA_PARAMS=http://192.168.2.92/images/snapshot0.jpg -o
Last update: 2024-05-08 08:38:11 +0200 (UTC)