Impact of printers and webcams on windows system

Nitin

Hi,

We have recently bought the pro version of the Repetier server. We plan to connect 13 printers to Windows PC (Dell OptiPlex 5000 Micro Form Factor) with 5 USB Ports and 1 USB C port. My question is that can I connect all the printers with a webcam for each, without any load/delay/lag what is the best way to connect them (13 printers and 13 webcams) to the PC?

If the PC I bought for this setup is not good enough, please suggest to me with recommended PC configuration.

Thank you, waiting for your response.

Repetier

That is nothing you can say for sure in any case. You need active hubs to get no power issues and the printers and webcams all need to have low emi disturbance so they all play well on the bus and the hub does not disconnect.

For number of webcams it also depends on the fact if they send data compressed, what their framerate and resolution is. Also you need a software that maps so many webcams to mjpg streams for access through server. The pro version of this
https://blueirissoftware.com/was told to handle this for many printers. I'd select some usb ports pure for printing communication which does not need much bandwidth and the rest for webcams. If webcams get too much reduce resolution or frame rate. That way the print should be uninterrupted since it runs on independent threads in software. If you see webcams lagging too much reduce bandwidth usage of webcams.

Nitin

Hey thank you so much for your response! I'm thinking of connecting the webcams through Raspberry pi to the server.

Repetier

Ok, depends on how many webcam streams you are showing in parallel. Always think that mjpg is not best compressed and to see it all streams go from pi via network to windows pc and from there to viewer in this constallation. But streams are only open when someone is viewing the stream so with good network this is possible if you are not watching all 13 in hd 30fps at same time:-) Actually I'd select anyhow 5 fps. That is enough to see what printers do and reduce all bandwidth problems.

Only thing to consider with pi - webcams MUST support hardware mjpg compression or you are limited to one webcam per pi.