Raspberry Camera V3 - focus, autofocus, other settings
 
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Shushuda
(@shushuda)
Estimable Member
Raspberry Camera V3 - focus, autofocus, other settings

I've recently attached a Raspberry Camera V3 to my PrusaLink-running Zero 2 W. It's detected by the newest PrusaLink just fine, but the image is very blurry. V3 has autofocus, but it looks like it's not working in PrusaLink.

I've been wondering if camera settings/control is handled by PrusaLink or if it can be setup manually somewhere directly on the Pi and PrusaLink will use those settings. I've never used a camera with Raspberry before, so I'm not sure how to approach this.

Can focus / autofocus be set somehow via ssh? I just want to reduce the blur in those snapshots.

I know that Octoprint has plugins for camera control and they allow to set autofocus on/off, set manual focus value, exposure and other things. Are there any plans to add a way to set those settings (at least focus and autofocus) directly in PrusaLink and/or Connect?

Posted : 23/03/2023 3:10 am
Diem
 Diem
(@diem)
Illustrious Member

IIrc the camera is available with a range of lenses, check you are not closer than the shortest focussing distance for your lense - and turn it around to see if it can focus on something further away.

Cheerio,

Posted : 23/03/2023 3:51 pm
Shushuda
(@shushuda)
Estimable Member
Topic starter answered:
RE: Raspberry Camera V3 - focus, autofocus, other settings

The focusing distance for V3 is just 10cm and I placed the camera further away, so it should focus just fine. It does focus on things on the other side of the room when I turn it around, but I don't see it self adjusting the focus when I put random things in its view. As if autofocus wasn't enabled.

Posted : 24/03/2023 12:14 am
Tojik
(@tojik)
Member Moderator
RE:

Yea, the PiCamV3 came out as I was finishing the support. I tried it out, it showed an image, i slapped it in the supported list and that was that, assumed it autofocussed by default. Welp, turns out it does like once, then stays that way. Been trying all yesterday to make it focus but so far no dice. Will try to fix it for the next release. Also wide variants of picamv3 are not in the whitelist in the RC3, so those won't work till the next release too.

Posted : 24/03/2023 10:22 am
1 people liked
Velocity
(@velocity)
Member
RE: Raspberry Camera V3 - focus, autofocus, other settings

I have the Wide version of the RPi Camera, and yeah its pretty blurry for some reason

Posted : 28/12/2024 12:32 pm
1 people liked
MontesDesigns.biz
(@montesdesigns-biz)
Active Member
RE: Raspberry Camera V3 - focus, autofocus, other settings

Can we please get this address in the next release? Could you maybe turn off the auto focus and make sure the manual focus slide bar works for the Pi Camera v3. Thanks!

Posted : 17/07/2025 11:59 am
Valentin
(@valentin-2)
Member
RE:

Hey everyone,

I’m still running into issues with blurry images when using the RPi Camera V3 Wide connected to an RPi Zero 2W on my Prusa MK3S+.

I’m currently running PrusaLink 0.8.1, and while reviewing the release notes for 0.7.1-rc1, I noticed the mention of the prusa_printer_settings.ini file. Inspecting it, I found that the focus slider in the PrusaLink web interface updates the focusvalue between 0 and 1.

According to the official Raspberry Pi documentation ( https://datasheets.raspberrypi.com/camera/camera-module-3-product-brief.pdf ), the focus range of the V3 Wide starts at 5 cm. I’m using this mount ( https://www.printables.com/model/1253492-prusa-mk3s-mk3s-pi-camera-v3-mount ), which positions the nozzle roughly 5 cm from the camera when the X-axis is set to 10.

At this distance or greater I can’t get a sharp image — changing the focus slider doesn’t seem to affect the image at all, even though the value in prusa_printer_settings.ini does change. However, the image remains out of focus in both cases and values in between as well. I will attach two images with both of the extremes focus values for inspection. To me, they look identical. I tried restarting PrusaLink in between setting changes as well. 

Am I missing something to enable or use manual focus on this setup? Is there any way to activate autofocus instead?

Focus 0 Focus 1

This post was modified 3 weeks ago 2 times by Valentin
Posted : 30/10/2025 12:19 pm
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