Bambu Lab makes outstanding printer hardware. The Bambu Lab X1, P1, and A1 series of printers are all top-of-the-line hardware and produce amazing prints with little maintenance. No wonder they have become the first choice for many 3D printing makers.
One downside of the X1, P1, and A1 Bambu Lab printers is their lackluster webcams. The P1 and A1 series can only stream at 1 frame per second, and the X1 camera isn’t positioned well. On top of that, when you try to access your 3D printer’s webcam remotely, the stream can take several seconds to load in the Bambu Handy app.
Enter OctoEverywhere. OctoEverywhere is a maker community project to empower 3D printers with powerful cloud tools. OctoEverywhere recently released support for Bambu Lab printers with their Bambu Connect plugin.
Bambu Connect offers many out-of-this-world features, but one of the coolest is that it allows you to set up an external webcam with any Bambu Lab printer. The external webcam streams at full frame rate and full resolution and can be used for remote access, AI print failure detection, print notifications, and more.
Here’s a complete guide on how to set up your full-frame rate webcam on any Bambu Lab 3D printer!
Get The Required Hardware
OctoEverywhere’s Bambu Connect plugin needs a device to run on. Most users use a Raspberry Pi, but any Debian-based Linux device will work. You can even install Bambu Connect on existing device setups, such as OctoPrint, Klipper, Home Assistant, etc.
We recommend getting a Raspberry Pi 4 since they are powerful, have amazing community support, and have a low price point. If you have multiple Bambu Lab 3D printers, you can even run multiple instances of the Bambu Connect plugin on a single Raspberry Pi 4.
Here are a few places you can buy a Raspberry Pi 4:
- Amazon is a great place to buy them, with fast shipping.
- The official Raspberry Pi website also has links to many official resellers.
You will also need a microSD card, a power supply, and a USB-based webcam. If you have any lying around, you can use them or buy them from just about anywhere.
Install The Rasberry Pi OS
Once you have a Raspberry Pi, you must install the operations system on the MicroSD card. To do so, first put the MicroSD card into your computer.
Next, download the Raspberry Pi Imager installer, which is available here for Windows, Mac, and Linux.
Run the Raspberry Pi Imager and do the following:
- Select “Choose OS”
- Select “Raspberry Pi OS (64-bit)”
- Select “Choose Storage”
- Select your MicroSD card
- Click the gear icon to configure settings.
- Enable “set hostname” and give your device a name.
- You will use this hostname to access your device on your network.
- Enable “SSH” and select “Use password authentication”
- Enable “Set username and password” and enter a username and password for the device.
- It’s recommended to use the username pi and a strong password
- This password is the same password you will use for SSH.
- Select “Configure wireless LAN”
- Enter your home WiFi network details.
- You don’t need to do this if you plan on plugging the device into your network with an ethernet cable.
- Press Save
- Press “Write”
- Enable “set hostname” and give your device a name.
When the imager is done, it will tell you. You can then remove the MicroSD card from your computer and put it into the Raspberry Pi.
Attach The Camera
Once you put the MicroSD card into your device, plug your USB camera into any USB ports and connect the power cable. If you’re using an ethernet cable to connect the device to your network, plug that in.
Setup The Webcam Software
To set up the webcam software, you will need to SSH into your Raspberry PI. To SSH, you will need to use a terminal, such as MobaXterm on Windows or the Terminal app on a Mac. Here is an excellent guide for downloading and using MobaXterm.
When you have your terminal set up to SSH use the following command:
ssh pi@<your device hostname>.localUse the hostname you set in the Raspberry Pi Imager settings when you flashed the MicroSD card. You will also need to use the password you set.
We will use camera-streamer, an open-source project on GitHub, for the webcam server. To install it, follow the directions on their release page here.
After you install camera-streamer, make sure you enable one of the profiles. We recommend you use the “camera-streamer-raspi-usb-cam.service” profile, like this:
sudo systemctl enable /usr/share/camera-streamer/examples/camera-streamer-raspi-usb-cam.service
sudo systemctl start camera-streamer-raspi-usb-camInstall OctoEverywhere Bambu Connect
This is the easy step! Simply run this command in your terminal connected via SSH.
bash <(curl -s https://octoeverywhere.com/bambu.sh) The installation will guide you through a few setup questions, and you will be done!
Setup Your External Webcam In OctoEverywhere
This is the last step! You need to tell OctoEverywhere where your local webcam server can be found. Do the following:
- Go to your OctoEverywhere dashboard.
- Click the gear icon on the Bambu Lab printer you just added.
- Use the toggle at the bottom to enable the “Alternative Webcam” feature
- For the Snapshot URL, enter:
/webcam/snapshot
- For the streaming URL, enter:
- `/webcam/stream`
- Select the “Alternative Webcam” as the default webcam at the top of the settings page.
Done! 🎉
That’s it! You now have a full 30 FPS webcam setup for your Bambu Lab X1, P1, or A1 series printer. OctoEverywhere’s Bambu Connect has many amazing features, like full-frame rate remote webcam streaming, advanced AI print failure detection, print notifications, live streaming, and more. Be sure to check them all out!
