A suggestion ( and some more characters for no reason )

3D Fabrication
1

Now that the camera is once again pointed at the 3D printers, it occurs to me that a very useful thing to have would be an indicator light of some kind on each printer giving some clue as to whether the printer is in use or not.

I think there is a plugin for Octoprint that can operate LED strips. That might work. Possibly with a manual switch to turn on a “broken” indicator. ( I think it would have to be manual. Or maybe an input into the same plugin could be used to signal something other than “running”, “idle”, or “out of filament”.

I haven’t got either of my printers up to the point of actually needing OctoPrint yet, so I haven’t explored the lighting options myself. I’d bet someone in thge group has though.

2

All the printers have build platform webcams that can be viewed via octoprint… Is this not enough visual indicator of use, or am I missing the direction of your question?

3

I don’t believe those cams are accessible from outside of DMS.

I took a look at the new camera feed ( of the room ) and could not tell which printers were printing. That’s what prompted the idea.

4

the webcams on the printers are viewable from home via the jump server

5

I was thinking in terms of one image showing all of them at a glance. Not a process of figuring out if I can get to the jump server, then logging in ( challenging on my phone ), and then remembering all the IP addresses of the Octoprint servers.

But if the suggesting has no value, so be it.

6

once upon a time, the octoprint cameras were viewable from offsite using this URL
https://physical.dallasmakerspace.org:3333/
They only sorta worked sometimes and have had trouble over the time since setup, but maybe the fragments could be reconnected?

@Team_Infrastructure would probably have to get that done; I’m willing to help, though questionably able at best…