Printed It: Logitech C270 Conversion

One of the most practical applications for a home 3D printer is the ability to produce replacement parts; why wait a week for somebody to ship you a little plastic widget when you’ve got a machine that can manufacture a facsimile of it in a couple of hours? But what if your skills and passion for the smell of melting PLA push you even farther? You might move on from printing replacement parts to designing and building whole new devices and assemblies. Arguably this could be considered “peak” 3D printing: using a printer to create new devices which would otherwise …read more

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Coolest Way to Watch 3D Printing: Lights, Camera, Octolapse!

Octoprint is a household name for anyone into 3D printing and anyone regularly reading Hackaday. Described by creator Gina Häußge as “the snappy web interface for your 3D printer”, Octoprint allows you to control effectively any desktop 3D printer over the local network or Internet. It even has webcam support so you can watch your printer while it works, meaning you can finally put that video baby monitor back into the crib with Junior.

While the core functionality of Octoprint is fantastic alone, its true power is unlocked through the plugin system and the community that’s sprung up around it. …read more

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Low-Cost Eye Tracking with Webcams and Open-Source Software

“What are you looking at?” Said the wrong way, those can be fighting words. But in fields as diverse as psychological research and user experience testing, knowing what people are looking at in real-time can be invaluable. Eye-tracking software does this, but generally at a cost that keeps it out of the hands of the home gamer.

Or it used to. With hacked $20 webcams, this open source eye tracker will let you watch how someone is processing what they see. But [John Evans]’ Hackaday Prize entry is more than that. Most of the detail is in the video below, …read more

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