Buddy Cam Stand Alone Option  

RE: Buddy Cam Stand Alone Option

me too. It already seems like it's an IP camera, so why no standalone option?

RE: Buddy Cam Stand Alone Option

I am actually surprised, that Prusa did not provide the following setup options for Buddy3D Cam from the start:

• Setup WIFI per QR Code without Prusa Connect: Just enter credentials in the APP or a website, generate QR code in the browser, without transmitting the credentials anywhere, camera reads QR code and connects to WIFI
• Publish firmware as download and allow firmware updates per USB-C
• Document the technical details of the local video stream option for integration

There may be reasons for them to develop the Prusa Connect scenario first, but I really hope they release a straight forward option for people, that do not want to hand over control over a webcam in their homes to a cloud solution.

RE: Buddy Cam Stand Alone Option

Agreed - it must be possible to set wifi credentials via USB connection or put a small config file on the uSD card, if Prusa could just let us know the details (if it's not possible it surely would be a trivial firmware change to do so).

I don't want anything on anyone's cloud service no matter how friendly and nice they are. Some places can't use cloud at all for security or other good reasons.

RE: Buddy Cam Stand Alone Option

For the curious, if you plug in a Buddy3D to a PC it actually enumerates a CP2102N USB-serial port which makes me think it may be possible to connect via a terminal app & configure it - or perhaps root it.

Looking inside there actually is a CP2102N chip on the USB interface board. I can also see a Winbond 25N QSPI-Flash but can't make out the actual brains of the system as there's 2 devices with heatsinks glued on top - one being the Wifi module and the other presumably being the system processor.

There's a lot of spare IO on the board - several unused connectors inside as well as what appears to be unpopulated footprints for chips, and a battery symbol that suggests the PCB design at least could be built with a battery - possibly in-built charging circuit too.

This *may* mean it's actually a 3rd party camera board that could be re-flashed to get around the cloud-only firmware.

RE: Buddy Cam Stand Alone Option

From some research it looks to be a niceboy guardian PR1, assuming the guts in the coreONE camera are the same as the regular buddy camera. 

RE: Buddy Cam Stand Alone Option

Here's a little addition: The camera does not work completely stand-alone this way, but if the camera has already been successfully connected via the “official” process, you can access it without Prusa Connect from that point on and use it like a normal network camera.

You can simply open the camera stream with a program such as VLC or ContaCam. The link looks like this:

rtsp://192.168.178.XX/live >(XX) is the IP address of the camera in your network.