Integrating Wainlux K8 laser engraver with Lightburn

2023-12-22T00:00:00+00:00

A couple days ago I gave my SO Wainlux K8 laser engraver. We were excited to try it out, but we quickly realized that the camera feature wasn’t working with Lightburn. I searched online for a solution, but I couldn’t find anything.

Sadly, manufacturer software is unusable - it’s buggy, slow, and doesn’t work on Linux. With tcpdump sniffing packets in the background, I found out that when you press the screenshot button in the CutLabX, it sends a GET request to different IP address than the K8 itself. So, camera feed is available on a different IP address than the K8 itself. It turns out that there are network 2 devices in the K8: the engraver itself and the camera. Also, the camera feed is just static image, not a video stream.

Upon further investigation, K8 has 2 ESP32s inside:

first one running Grbl_Esp32 for the motion control, networking and controlling laser
second with ESP32-CAM or some fork of it for serving static image

So, it should be easy peasy to get the camera feed working with Lightburn, right? Well, yes.

I decided to write this guide to help others, because I couldn’t find any in the Internet.

Prerequisites

Wainlux K8 Laser Engraver
A computer with internet access
Basic understanding of HTML and network settings
CutLabX app installed on your PC or Mac

Steps

1. Connect Wainlux K8 to Your Home Network

Turn on your Wainlux K8 and connect it to your home WiFi network using the CutLabX app. You can use official guide for reference.
Find out the IP address of your K8, you can see it in the bottom right corner:
Write down or save the IP address for later use.

2. Find the Camera Feed URL

Open any browser on your computer and enter the following URL: http://[XXXXX]/cam.jpg - replace [XXXXX] with the IP address you wrote down earlier, but add 1 to the last octet. In my case, CutLabX app shows 192.168.175.64, so I need to use 192.168.175.65.
If you see a camera feed, you’re good to go. If not, try to find the addresses around (by adding or subtracting 1 from the last number). If it still doesn’t work, you might want to use a network scanner or just try to find the camera IP in your router’s admin panel.
Write down or save the camera feed URL for later use.

This is needed, because the camera feed is not available on the same IP address as the K8 itself. Usually, it’s the next address in the network due to DHCP.

3. Create a Refreshing Webpage

You’ll need to create a simple HTML page that refreshes automatically every X seconds (in my case it’s 5000 ms) to display the camera feed.
In any text editor, create a new file and paste the following code:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
    <style>
        iframe { width: 100vw; height: 100vh; border: 0; }
    </style>
    <script>
        function reload() {
            setTimeout(function() {
                document.body.firstElementChild.src += "", reload()
            }, 5000)
        }
        reload();
    </script>
</head>
<body>
    <iframe src="[XXXXX]"></iframe>
</body>
</html>

Replace [XXXXX] with the camera feed URL: http://[Wainlux_K8_IP]/cam.jpg. In my example, this is http://192.168.178.65/cam.jpg.
Save the file as page.html in any location.
Test the page by opening it in a browser. You should see the camera feed and it should refresh every 5 seconds.

4. Set Up OBS (Open Broadcaster Software)

Download and install OBS from its official website.
Open OBS and create a new scene.
Add a source to the scene by choosing ‘Browser’:
Set the URL to the location of the HTML page you created earlier, checkmark Local file, set the width and height to 1024x768:
Enable Virtual Camera in OBS. This makes OBS stream the content of the scene (i.e., your HTML page) as if it were a webcam.

5. Integrate with Lightburn

Open Lightburn, connect to your K8 via USB, and open the camera control panel.
Go to the camera selection settings.
Select OBS Virtual Camera as the camera source.

6. Calibration

Now, you can proceed with the calibration for the lens and position within Lightburn. There are plenty of guides, so I won’t cover it here.

Conclusion

That’s it! Now you can use the camera feature in Lightburn with your Wainlux K8 laser engraver. I like this little engraver, it’s a great way to get started with laser engraving.

Idea creates need - part 1

2023-02-03T00:00:00+00:00

I am an engineer. Engineers are lazy people.

Recently I have been having a shitload of meetings at work. Say goodbye to good old times when you could not leave your comfort zone for days - not talk to other people.

I’ve been using keyboard shortcuts to mute the microphone. Not long ago (~7 months) I moved to a split keyboard DIY lily58 and I’m loving it, but there’s a catch. It has only 58 keys, so to mute myself I need to push the Raise button together with M, in other words, I need to use both hands to mute myself. I could change it to another key on the first layout, but changing the keymap layout requires recompilation of software and flashing the keyboard itself, it’s tedious. Also, I would have to re-learn this shortcut. God damn.

Around 5 years ago I was using a Microsoft Sidewinder X6 keyboard which had a volume knob. You could map the Mute function to F12 which was near it, so both volume control and mute were close. You could use a single hand to control it. It was awesome.

Taking the above thoughts into consideration, my plan is to create a device that would mitigate these problems. Key aspects that I would love to have:

ability to change the volume and mute the microphone
volume mute indicator
microphone mute indicator
small footprint on a desk
long battery life - at least 2 weeks
built-in battery rechargeable via USB-C
wireless

I have some ideas in my mind but I need to sleep with them. Stay tuned for over-engineering.

The first post

2023-02-02T00:00:00+00:00

First post. The fact is that I don’t know what I want to write about (for now).

hubcio tech blog