Custom Webcam form old windows laptop

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1

Hey Yall,

I have a Surplus of these salvaged webcams from older Windows laptop that I've used as standalone USB webcams and security cameras, they work really well and are a good way to recycle old hardware for other useful projects. Because I have a few extras, I was thinking of maybe using them as a USB Webcam for my 3d printer (running on octoprint 1.5.2 on a pi4 ) but the only issue is when I plug them in octoprint does not recognize them. I"m guessing the issue is probably driver based (because they get recognized as an integrated webcam when plugged into a windows computer. I've tried extracting the drivers from windows to upload to octoprint, but had no luck ) and was wondering if anyone has tried anything similar or has any ideas on how I could get this to work?

2

OctoPrint doesn't deal in webcams, OctoPi the OS image does. It is Raspberry Pi OS based, which in turn is debian based. You can try any number of things that are linux based.

The first thing I would do is try and get it recognised as a device by the OS. Commands for this are useful such as lsusb or ls /dev/video*, to see if is is recognised as a device. When you are searching the internet, don't look for OctoPrint/OctoPi specific solutions, rather more generic and you might find more answers.

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