hey after the last episode I had thought about doing a few of these as well
I no longer use octoprint
but I had a suggestion I know your a Nikon guys but a older Cannon can be had pretty cheep and they work as a web cam via usb with out gphoto I believe my of course my Rebel XT is the oldest of them and it does not it does do stils with Gphoto though
but I also found a plug in for Duet controller boards
that I think I am going to try
if it triggers on layer change focus should not be a problem your not capturing any motion so auto focus should be fine
if you need a cheep wifi enable webcam the esp32 camera works not bad for less than $10
hit up amazon for and search for esp32 cam or AIthinker