11/17/2025 - Planned the project + Basic parts

So original plan was to have some kind of AI monitoring on device and I looked into a lightweight solution and found this (https://github.com/oliverbravery/PrintGuard) but turns out they tested it and used a pi 4b which costs around 55+ bucks and seems to be out of budget as im assuming this project will probably end up in tier 4 or 5 so instead im going to be opting for the pi zero 2 w!! along with that for the camera im going to be going with a Pi Camera 3 module and for power I was planning to use a 5000mah 3.7v or 10000mah 3.7v battery along with a TP4056 module for charging. Additionally, I think I'll need to get a converter from 3.7v to 5v to properly power the pi but I wasn't completely sure how that part worked so I was going to come back to that. Next, the internals will have a 3d printed casing and just a simple riser stand that should suffice with a cutout for the camera and ports. The pi will just be connected to the university wifi and will broadcast a web server for viewing the print and I will access this through tailscale. It also looks like their software is kinda locked down unless you're the owner so I don't think ill be able to integrate it but I'll be looking more into it. However, the pricing for all of this comes out to around 60 bucks so I might have to reevaluate. the bulk of the cost comes from the camera and the battery and I might be able to drop the camera to an older module which is 15 instead of 27 so that should drop me into the right range.

11/18/2025 - Reduced cost to in range

So I ended up deciding that I would downgrade to a Raspberry Pi Camera 2 instead of 3 to keep costs in range. Also found that my uni gives us free 3d printing for orange so ill be using that. overall design of the physical casing will probably just be a chill box with a cut out for the camera so that shouldnt be too complicated. Additionally, I realized that the TP4056 doesn't output the right voltage or amperage so im adding a booster so I can get it at 5v 3a which should be good. Heres the BOM so far:

So the pricing is kinda on edge but this should be doable!! since I have all the parts planned out im gonna start working on the casing and all.

11/21/2025 - DIFF HARDWARE!!

so did some research and to wipe out most the issues so far, i'm gonna end up using the esp32 sense which is just a microcontroller instead of a whole cpu which i highkey shoulda realized wouldve worked better so ill be using that which should greatly reduce costs and I also wont need the buck booster i think since it says it can take from the 3.7v battery via the battery input!! however, it seems like the battery charging system on the seeed xiao is very slow and charges at 100 mah? and with some calculations im planning to feature a 5000 mah battery to sustain it for at least 20 hours (my library printers are slow ender 3v2s and they max out at 24 hour print time). to fix this, im planning a swappable battery system with 2 batteries and a dock style charger with a tp4056 featuring the magnetic pogo pins that r so cool!! heres how the bom looks so far with some links:

next up im gonna make a wiring diagram and try to start designing some 3d prints (i've basically never done cad before)

11/24/2025 - Software planning

Since i've gotten most the hardware parts planned, i started looking into how the software side is gonna work. Originally, I was planning to have it record and basically just stream like an ip camera using tailscale or something similar but after I switched to an esp32 instead of a pi I realized thats not as much possible and I'll have to work something else out. My plan now is just to take snapshots every ~10 seconds or so and just have it upload those snapshots through tailscale funnel to a local device that just has those screenshots saved and deletes them when a new project is started since i dont need the older files. this will then be accessed from my phone through a simple web interface and that should be good!