If I’m making something with the laser cutter during a Zoomed SquidWrench meeting, switching the view to a camera inside the cabinet is always a crowd-pleaser. Having tried several locations with various degrees of success, the camera now sits atop a small chipboard box holding it as high as it can get over the front left corner of the platform:
It juuuust barely kisses the head in that corner:
The box is a simple ClosedBox from boxes.py with a jawbreaker URL full of parameters, minus two holes, plus a quartet of shims, all cut from chipboard:
The holes fit a 1/4-20 button head screw for the Logitch C615 camera’s tripod mount and the hex wrench needed to tighten it:
The box is held together with Genuine Scotch Tape, because I want it to fall apart if it gets hit by the laser head. It’s held to the cabinet with a finger-crushingly strong bar magnet.
The camera has a reasonably good view of the entire platform:
The camera’s closest focus point sits about halfway across the platform, roughly corresponding to the typical monitor-to-face distance the camera was intended for, but it’s Good Enough™ for the purpose.
The Smell of Molten Projects in the Morning 