Arducam IMX708 12MP 120° Wide Angle HDR Camera Module with M12 Lens, High SNR Camera for Raspberry Pi

Nice camera but more than I needed. RPi 5 requires 2 narrow ends on ribbon cable with this can. It's provided but short at 250 mm length. Follow the configuration edits for RPi operation. Fairly painless "Bookworm " installation with the configuration edits. Works great with installation of XRDP in Bookworm for Remote Desktop connection to rpi from Windows 11 and video stream connection. Don't use auto login on RPi if you're going to Remote Desktop.

I have been wanting to get an octoprint setup going on one of my 3D printers for a long time. I got this raspberry pi camera module 3 from Arducam for the project. I can't believe how small this board/lens is, and they pack it in an amazingly tiny box--only about 1.5 inches cube. I am pleasantly surprised with the picture quality. I guess I've seen so many dark grainy photos from others of their 3D prints that I wasn't expecting this to be so excellent, with vibrant color. The manual focus may not suit everyone's situations, but this is perfect for 3D printer monitoring, since there is a moving print head to trick any sensor. I tested this out on a raspberry pi 3B+. I did have to briefly battle the "no camera" issue, but that was a configuration change I needed to make in the raspberry pi to disable auto detection and set the camera module manually. That was clear enough in their on-line discussions. Once I did that, it worked great. I was resting the camera upside down and found the way to invert the images. I'm quite impressed with this incredibly tiny camera. I may need to get an extension cable depending on how I mount this on my printer setup. But this is great for what I'm hoping to do.

I'm not saying this is good or bad but I had to issue setting this up for the purposes I needed

I have multiple 3D printers and I use a Raspberry Pi with cameras to monitor and control the printers. I have a couple of the Arducam for Raspberry Pi Camera Modules and they all work great. It will plug right into the Raspberry Pi and work natively. It is a manual focus camera which is what you want as an autofocus camera will constantly try to focus with a moving background. Using a manual focus, you can use a focal point where the print is located. With the wide HFOV, you can be closer to the print bed and still see the entire bed. Of course, it can be used for a large variety of applications and projects. As I have used them before, I can absolutely recommend the Arducam for Raspberry Pi Camera Module!

The picture quality is bar none for a raspberry pi. The only challenge is the lens. If gives a good wide angle view that is very clear, but it’s so large it can be hard to fit into places. I think if you want to use this for a DIY security camera it will work perfect, for my use case of a 3D printer camera, I had a hard time finding an adequate place to mount it.