The New Hotness

The bCNC doc shows how to use a USB camera for XY alignment and I want to try it out. The Box o’ USB Cameras emitted a likely candidate with a focusing lens, six (!) white LEDs, and a ball mount attached to an aggressive spring clip, but its thick USB cable included a lumpy brightness pot for the LEDs and sprouted a mic plug (apparently, it predated cheap USB audio):

The Box o’ USB Cables emitted a surprisingly long cable amputated from some random hunk of consumer electronics.

The LED brightness won’t need much adjustment after the first few minutes. I found a little 2 kΩ trimpot to fit the PCB holes:

Miracle of miracles, the dial ended up almost centered behind the original mic pore. A few minutes of gentle filing embiggened the pore and moved it over the trimpot:

Yeah, the hole may need a plug or tape to keep the dust out, but there’s an even bigger gap around the lens.

It produces a 640×480 picture with pretty much the expected quality, which should suffice for its intended purpose.

Next step: stick it somewhere on the MPCNC.