Greetings,
I thought I would share my camera setup so it might help someone else.
The first thing I started working on after ordering my laser a couple months ago was a camera setup that didn’t require the computer to be close by. Since the controller can be connected to my network I wanted that same flexibility with the camera.
Since Lightburn doesn’t support IP cameras I needed to come up with a different solution. So, I figured this was a perfect project for a Raspberry Pi. I tested this setup with both a Raspberry Pi 2 Model B and also a Raspberry Pi Zero. Originally I tried a ELP camera from Amazon because the LightBurn cameras were out of stock. This camera did not work and from what I was reading about camera compatibility with Raspberry Pi, I thought I was dead in the water.
When the 8 MP camera was back in stock I ordered one. I figured I would just get a long USB cable and live with it. But, I thought I would try it with the Raspberry Pi and to my surprise, it worked. Here is the setup I did to get what I wanted.
Raspberry Pi Zero with the Raspbian OS (Standard configuration to get it on my WiFi. Nothing special)
Installed VirtualHere Server on the Pi (This allows USB devices to be shared over a network)
Installed the VirtualHere client on my computer running LightBurn. (This allows my LightBurn computer to connect to the USB camera connected to the Pi and the computer sees it as a USB connected camera.)
This setup seems to only work on my Windows 10 computers and not the one Windows 7 computer I have. I’m not troubleshooting the Windows 7 issue since it needs to go away any how. I’m not going into the configuration for the Pi or VirtualHere. There is plenty of documentation about all of that. I just thought I would share what I did to get a camera working in LightBurn without having it physically connected to the computer it was running on.
I hope this can help someone since I’ve seen several posts about using IP based cameras with LightBurn. My solution isn’t exactly “IP” based, but it achieves the same end result.
Now, go after it and have fun!!
Laser On