Ezra Harris

Author: ezradharris

  • Octoprint: Night Vision Raspberry Pi Camera

    Recently when I set up my new Octoprint setup, I had included a raspberry pi touchscreen as well, and I had needed to 3D print a case for it to mount to the top of my Ender-3. After a little bit of searching, I found a design I liked. as I was printing it, I had looked at the “makes” section (the “Makes” section is just where people who 3d printed the model would post pictures of it); when I had looked at one of them, they said they used a camera called the “MakerFocus Raspberry Pi 4 Night Vision Camera” The camera on Amazon was only $20. It seemed to be a good camera for what the reviews were saying, so I purchased it, and a day later, it arrived in the mail.

    When it arrived, I put it together and wondered what the little “eyes” were on the left and the right; when I looked it up, it was an IR sensor for better night vision. Putting together the camera was super easy and was “plug and play” for the most part with Octopi.
    Although the camera isn’t the best quality for Youtube videos, it’s perfect for the price. The night vision works exceptionally well and is very cool to see before bed to check on the print. Overall I really enjoy it, and it is my favorite Raspberry Pi camera I have seen so far.
    Here is a picture of the 3D printer at night when lights are off:
    And here is a screenshot of the camera view of the same thing:

  • Octoprint Plugin: “OctoSlack”

    Recently I decided to set up my Octoprint again with my Ender-3, but this time I used a touchscreen from my older brother. This time when setting up, I installed a couple of new plugins I have never used before. An Octoprint plugin is a way for the community to make changes and fixes with some fun tweaks.

    One of the plugins I installed was called Octoslack. Octoslack is a way for the printer to let you know that a print is either finished, started, failed, or canceled. Without you having to check the printer 24/7. It was surprisingly easy to set up with Discord as a Discord Bot. So far, this is an amazing plugin when it finishes or starts a print. It attaches a picture of the 3d printer via the night vision camera I installed onto the printer. It works with Slack (thus Octoslack as the name) “Mattermost, Pushbullet, Pushover, Rocket. Chat, Discord, Riot/Matrix, or Microsoft Teams.” You can also add custom actions to notify you by entering the part of the GCODE that you want it to notify you, for example. You could have it notify you by using the GCODE which means go to the corner of the bed, or when it goes up by a certain height, it will notify you with the message you set it to.

    Overall I really like this plugin. It’s handy and is pretty. Fun to know when a print is finished even if I’m not home.

    https://github.com/fraschetti/Octoslack

  • How to Setup a Minecraft Server (The easy way)

    I recently made a Minecraft server, but the way I did it required a lot of knowledge and a lot of tutorial following to complete. So instead of trying to explain to my friends how to make a Minecraft server the way I did. But I found out about an in-game command called /publish. With the /publish command, you can host the server on any port of your choosing by doing, for example: /publish 25565.

    And so I have made a quick and easy tutorial on how to set up a Minecraft server the easy way:

    STEP 1:  Open Minecraft and select “Singleplayer”

    STEP 2:  Create a new world and make sure to enable cheats. You can change the other world settings to how you like.

    STEP 3:  Once the world has loaded, type this into chat: /publish 25565; it should return. “Multiplayer game is now hosted on port 25565.” 

    STEP 4:  Next, open your browser (Chrome, Safari, Edge, Etc.) and type: 192.168.1.1 into the search bar (note: if it does not load, try 192.168.0.1 instead of 192.168.1.1; also make sure you are connected to Wi-Fi.) Next, when prompted to log in, use admin for the username and the password.

    STEP 5:  Once logged into the interface, select the Advanced tab (this varies from router to router, but if you have a Netgear router, this will be in the same place.) Then select the Advanced Setup tab and press the Port Forwarding and Port Triggering tab. After that, press the Add custom service button. Then change the external and internal port to 25565. Once completed, scroll down and see the list of devices. If you see the name of your device, select it. If not, follow this tutorial and type the IP into the internal IP address section (typically, you would want to find the ending numbers of your IP address, e.g., 192.168.1.4). Once done, click the apply button and wait till it loads back to the previous page.

    STEP 6:  To let your friends be able to connect, type What’s my IP? Into your search bar will return your IP (Note: This is different from the device IP you need to port forward from earlier). Then if your friends want to join, all they need to do is put your IP into the Direct Connect button in the Minecraft Multiplayer tab.

    Now you’re set! However, some other things to note: do not share your IP to your server with people you do not trust or publicly post it. The reason is that if someone had a machine capable, they could DDoS your router and would result in having to change a lot of things to fix, and basically rendering your internet useless or super slow. Don’t know what DDoS is? Read this article for more info.

    A downside to hosting a server like this is that the server closes as soon as you close the world. If you want to reopen the server again, just type /publish 25565 , and your set! Good luck on your server.

  • Making a Live Stream Overlay

    About a week ago was my friend Isaiah’s birthday, and I wanted to make something for him. We had both wanted to get into live streaming games on a platform called Twitch. And a lot of people who live stream games use overlays. Overlays are basically an image or text that will go over your game. For example: 

    He has a follower count, a camera overlay, and a subscriber count. All of those are overlays that he added to his stream. When he plays the game, he doesn’t see all of the overlays, but only the viewers do. Overlays can be added using streaming software like OBS Studio (Open Broadcasting Software). Overlays can also be useful for reading chat or donations sent to the streamer.
    And since my friend wanted to start live streaming games, he had asked me if I could design an overlay for him that would feature a chatbox, alerts (such as donations and subscribers,) a follow goal, and a subscriber goal. He laid out the design on a piece of paper where he wanted everything. Here is a picture sketch he provided me with:
    The important thing is to get the right size. In Canva, I used the presentation size because that would fill the entire screen. I also needed to export as png as Canva has a transparent background option when you export it. And here is the final result:
     (one thing to note the text is mainly not on because he has to configure that on his own computer)

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