EMI/EFI Interference

Anyone ever experience any weird things in regard to EMI from a printer? Or understand EMI and possible effects on cameras?
I ask because I have this crazy issue with a camera that I’m setting up on my Mini. It’s the funniest thing that anytime that the camera is pointed toward the hotend, the camera stops sending video feed. I’ve moved the camera around, and away from any wires, motors, electronics… I can even leave the camera mounted where I intended on putting it, and just swivel it away from looking at the hotend, and it’ll function properly… It’s only an issue when looking at the hotend. And while printing.

I would love to figure out exactly what’s going on. And a possible fix.

The camera is locally connected to the machine via USB… No wireless or anything wierd. It’s basically a USB webcam.


There is the magnetic field on the extruder motor, but thats going to be the same level as the other steppers, so if that were causing the issue, I’d expect you to see it pointing the camera at any of the other parts. Is the camera one with infrared night vision capabilities of any sort? It could be the heat from the hot end is just overloading the infrared receptors, which is basically useless during daylight condition filming, but still present nonetheless.

The only other thing I can think of would depend on the heater type. The standard hexagon hotend uses a nichrome wire ceramic core resistance heater. the higher resistance of the nichrome wire causes intense heat. There is another type of heater core, the magnetic induction based heater that some printers are equipped with. Those heater cores tend to heat up much faster and can get quite a bit hoter, but they also exude a fairly strong magnetic field.

If it is a magnetic field, moving the camera further from the printer should fix the issue. Magnetic fields decrease exponentially the further you get from the object.

If it’s infrared overload, moving further back may not fix the issue. Easy way to check for that would be using the camera in a dark room and seeing if it picks anything up.

Are you printing from sd card or from the pc using usb cable?.
If you are printing through usb try to select a different usb channel for your camera, specially if you are using long cables.

Thanks for the replies!!!

I took inaki’s suggestion and moved the USB to the other hub(side) of my machine, and this indeed helped considerably…
Although it’s still there, I was able to angle the camera just slightly, and still be able to see things without it cutting out too much.

The camera is a reasonably cheap “action” GoPro knock-off camera… I have an older GoPro, but it can only record to an SD card. This camera has a kewl web cam feature and is 1/4 of the price of a new GoPro. I don’t believe it uses any IR, nor does it have an IR cut filter, that I’m aware of… Full specs are non-existent…
http://www.sjcam.com/home/28-sjcam-m10-cube-mini-full-hd-action-sport-camera.html

I’ve searched a bit, and cannot find anything about EMI effects on cameras… It’s weird stuff for sure, as I can just put my finger in front of the lens, and it’ll start sending video again…<-- in regards to that, I’ve even tried turning the camera’s orientation left, right, upside down… Still wigs out…




I suppose until I figure it all out, I’ll don my aluminum foil hat, and jock strap to protect the berries while printing :laughing:

Thinking about it, and just throwing it out there…
Shortly after having this printer, the LCD on my machine died while printing…<–the printer sits about 4" away from the machine.



Fixed and printing an Amazon box opener :smiley:

I’m 99% sure it was the LCD, according to my test(remote and using video out did fine), so I think the controller was fine.
I found a whole LCD+ controller and bezel for a decent price… So I didn’t fiddle with trying to figure out if the LCD or controller was bad…

I’m now wondering if it was the printer that killed the LCD… :question: :confused:

The machine is a
Dell XPS 27 (2720)
i7-4770S
16GB RAM
Samsung Pro SSD(upgraded)

Well this is an interesting problem. There’s a quick way to see if it’s the infrared though. Take a piece of tempered glass if you can find some, and put it between the camera and the hotend when the camera is wigging out. If it stops then it was infrared. If it doesn’t it’s something else. I sorta doubt it’s a magenetic field, and if it was back emf or something it would happen even when the camera was pointed away from the hot end.

Very interesting.

It’s very weird for me, although I’ve seen a malfunctioning LED bulb in a lamp, that was close to a wireless Philips telephone station, give issues for the remote wireless phone…

I suppose that my next move is to use a different camera… Although I’d rather understand it, and find a better solution… :confused:

inaki,

Since your suggestion has made a difference, do you know the logic behind it?
I’m still having to point the camera, somewhat away from the hotend…

It’s been doing much better since your suggestion, but I still cannot find a happy place for the camera…

Is there some kind of insulation, that I can do?
Moving the camera further away doesn’t seem to make a difference.

I believe that all my USB ports are 3.0, and the printer and camera are both 2.0?

I’d like to fix it, but probably more-so, I’d like to understand the issue.