Universal dampened camera mount

[MonsieurAnon]

Some questions I received in a private message

How heavy are the two different mounts(heavy and lite)?

The Phantom 2 lite mount from Shapeways is 26.5g

My estimate for the heavy mount is 35g.

Which would be the best mount for cameras around 140-200g?

I cannot say, as I have not tested. However, the safe bet is to get the heavy mount, and if it is too stiff you could try removing 2 dampeners.

I read that lighter cameras(like my ixus132) would not be stable on the heavier mount?

That is definitely possible.

Would the lite mounts handle the heavier 200g camera?

Again, this is possible. The lite mount was originally designed for my 390g camera but turned out to not be very useful. I tested it with a <140g camera and it worked like a dream, but it could work for heavier units.

Do you think this would matter for just photos(no video)?

For both, a loose mount is worse than a stiff one. Jello and exposure ruining shake will be induced and regular. A stiff mount will generally just result in more jerky, sudden movement as the drone manoeuvres. Stills taken when hovering should be fine.

I also work in windy environments where you can have the odd bumpy landing so maybe the heavier one would work better?

Quite possibly. I found that with a heavier payload the Phantom is affected less by wind, but reacts more slowly. So long as your camera doesn't hang beneath the landing gear, the issue of rough landings shouldn't be a problem.

I have various dampeners- can you mix and match( matching opposites) or do you have a suggestion which works better?

The dampeners which I designed this for were the ones including the with DJI Vision as that's the product I own. Stiffer or looser dampeners may change the properties of either mount, in ways that may benefit you, but I have no experience with them.

I read that shapeways doesn't give you much of a percentage so I would be happy to do it via ebay or privately?

In this instance I didn't end up doing a private sale, as I'm still not completely sure that the PLA plastic that I print at home is temperature resistant enough to trust in a hot environment like the one this user wants it for. I'll eventually be doing tests on this, but the Shapeways Nylon is resistant to 80c, which is fine for basically all conceivable applications.

Shapeways allows designers to set the markup. I make a bit over $10 on each sale for a camera mount, and since I don't have to print, clean, package and charge for each product, this works out for me. So far I've made approximately $100 from sales in this way.

 

[MonsieurAnon]

Some additional notes on flying with the horizontal camera mount and the 350g Samsung NX-1100:

Using a zip tie, to hold the camera more tightly to the mount, I was able to tighten the gains. My normal advice for a heavy camera is to set gains to 90/90/120/150 ... but I was able to fly perfectly at 100/100/150/200. I think the higher centre of gravity results in less of a pendulum effect.

 

[MonsieurAnon]

I have finally gotten around to producing a proper hinged mount and it's available on Shapeways at this link; http://shpws.me/vgZG

In future I plan on producing a centre-balanced hinge mount for my Samsung, leaving the option open for using a single gimbal motor during flight, however that won't see any progress until I finish my other commitments.

 

[MonsieurAnon]

Continuous shooting hack:

 

[hughsnews]

(Posted originally on viewtopic.php?f=19&t=21169 but I past this review here for anyone reading the string.)
Hi All,
I use my phantom to take photos for archaeological projects. The photos we want are a birds-eye-view vertical shot down of archaeological features. GOPROS although great, I just don't trust the barrel distortion(and correction in photoshop) to give a truly accurate representation of the feature. As such, I try to fly up decent, but light, Point and Shoot cameras, such as the Canon S110.

I built my own mount out of perspex etc, and it worked but was heavy and ultimately if I could get say 1 out of every 3 shots being in focus, I was happy. I saw MonsieurAnon's post on building a 3D printed mount

So I ended up buying two of them, the heavy duty mount and the regular mount. I also used a horizontal mount made by Monsieur to get my vertical shots. Yesterday I finally managed to mount everything and go for a fly with good wind conditions so I thought I should review it.

The heavy duty mount is light but feels good in the hand and not flimsy, which I feared. Putting it together is simple as long as you have the required parts listed. I lacked the Vision dampeners but managed to find some ultra squishy ones I got when I bought a dampener pack from Helipal- they say they are (50) on the pack but I am unsure how much they differ from the regular white dampeners for the vision.

I attached the mount, my canon S110(approx 200 grams with battery), my Boscham transmitter, props etc and weighed it- it was 1340 grams. Excuse the wires, I just attached everything quickly to weigh it before I took it apart again to travel to the park.

The camera is held pretty tight to the body which is great as when you land you don't want to get the lens close to the ground.
I flew the P2 with regular flight settings and got massive oscillation. I then dropped pitch and roll to 110% instead of 120% and left everything else standard. This worked a treat. I did drop both down to 100% as well, but noticed no real difference between 100 or 110% so I left it on 110%. (On a side note- if I then swap this mount for the h3-2d and do not change these, will I notice any difference? I am fairly new to the world of gains )

It was a bright day, full sun and a light breeze (5-10km/h max). The camera decided to shoot between 1/160- 1/250 at ISO 80. Which is quick but not crazy fast like 1/500-1/1000. So the conditions were pretty ideal. In the end, the mount worked really well. I think maybe 1 in every 4 or 5 were blurry, so around 75% were crisp and sharp. Pretty good considering the quad does continously move and I do suffer slightly from TBE. Here is one probably from around 5-6 meters. You can see all my fragile stickers from the various plane trips I have taken.

Here is a similar photo at similar height, cropped and at 100%. Remember my camera is only 12.1mp so it's not massively detailed.

I attempted to fly the lighter mount but I mounted it slightly differently(camera sticking out from the quad rather than under it). This caused it to wobble a lot- which I expected but I just wanted to test it.

In the end, I am really happy with this mount. It works a treat and is handling well. It does require some tinkering in the sense of gains but you'd expect that for any mount. With a 200g camera it worked really well. It is about to get put through the wringer as in a week and half I will be in Greece in 40 degree heat, shooting for an archaeological site, so that will be its real test. If it is anything other than great(which I think it is at the moment), I will let you know.

 

[MonsieurAnon]

Sooo...

I'm finally on to the next step in this project, which I promised some of you months ago. It's super early days, and I just did a proof of concept test that really can't be considered anything more than a demonstration of the accuracy of my printer. It gets to 50 microns much more easily than I thought it would!

Here's a teaser:

You can even buy this item as a replacement part for your P2V if you feel so inclined!

At Shapeways of course

 

[MonsieurAnon]

I am currently writing a business proposal, to take the production of these parts from a hobby level to my full time occupation. As a part of it, I need people to fill out a survey, and I really don't know where else to ask so here goes:

What is your age/gender/location?

Do you currently buy this product?

How often would you buy this product?

How far would you travel to buy this product?

What would you expect to pay for this product?

Other than price, what would make you more likely to buy this product?

 

[MonsieurAnon]

https://www.shapeways.com/model/2831012 ... te-v2.html

Per some requests from a customer, I made some improvements to the Phantom 2 camera mount, that I sell on Shapeways. The mount now comes with a hinge by default and requires less additional bolts for assembly. The mount is stronger, and lighter than the lite version with a hinge, and I will be testing it with harder dampeners to determine if it can be used with heavy cameras.

 

[MonsieurAnon]

Just a little sneak peak at the latest iteration of this mount.

 

[max]

Great to see that you're still working on these mounts. I am interested in mounting these 3 cameras to my Vision 2+:
Gopro 4
Sony RX100M1
Sony A6000 w/ 16mm lens

Can you please recommend the combination of your mounts to do this? I will need tilt function. Are you doing any more updates to the heavy mount? Please let me know if I should wait some time before ordering! Looks like you've got stuff in the works.

 

[MonsieurAnon]

Hey Max, a customer is about to test the lighter mount with heavy duty dampener balls and the Sony RX-100. I have some on hand, but my Phantom is waiting on some spares before it can fly. It's definitely worth waiting for further development in your case, as I plan on making a dedicated goPro tilting mechanism, and I will be testing the Vision Servo with various weights of camera, to see it's limits.

That said; you have the Vision+ that means you might have to figure out if you can install a servo on your 7th channel.

 

[max]

Hey Max, a customer is about to test the lighter mount with heavy duty dampener balls and the Sony RX-100. I have some on hand, but my Phantom is waiting on some spares before it can fly. It's definitely worth waiting for further development in your case, as I plan on making a dedicated goPro tilting mechanism, and I will be testing the Vision Servo with various weights of camera, to see it's limits.

That said; you have the Vision+ that means you might have to figure out if you can install a servo on your 7th channel.

Thanks for the quick reply. I'm currently not too interested in having tilt control in-flight, just ability to adjust it on the ground (this might change though haha). I will keep an eye on this thread for updates.

 

[jtresfon]

https://www.shapeways.com/model/2831012/dji-phantom-2-universal-camera-mount-lite-v2.html

Per some requests from a customer, I made some improvements to the Phantom 2 camera mount, that I sell on Shapeways. The mount now comes with a hinge by default and requires less additional bolts for assembly. The mount is stronger, and lighter than the lite version with a hinge, and I will be testing it with harder dampeners to determine if it can be used with heavy cameras.

MonsieurAnon this is a fantastic product! I have been researching the use of a high end compact with the P2 (non-vision) and discovered your thread. I am interested mainly in high quality stills rather than video. I have done some testing with various cameras and some hack mounts. I am using a HDMI to AV out converter on the camera in combination with the DJI ALV5.8 video TX to get full FPV for shot framing as well as an iOSD mini so I can get flight and battery data on the display. One thing I had not anticipated is that with the camera mounted upside down the video feed is also upside down. Although it is possible to rotate the picture on the monitor this then means that the flight and battery data is also rotated and therefore unreadable. Long story made short, I need to have the camera mounted right side up.

Could you apply that educated mind of yours to a solution? It should be relatively simple to design a rectangular bracket that mounts to your P2 camera mount V2 to get the camera right side up... Pretty please!

Regards
Jean.

 

[Droner_Aus]

I am one of the people having James make up mounts for me. Have the new one on the way and can't wait for it to arrive. Good to see some Aussie innovation!

 

[MonsieurAnon]

Thanks for the quick reply. I'm currently not too interested in having tilt control in-flight, just ability to adjust it on the ground (this might change though haha). I will keep an eye on this thread for updates.

Ahh, that's pretty much what Droner_Aus has. The current V2 mount, without the servo bracket does that pretty well and I have a few made up already, waiting for customers. I guess we will find out soon enough, how the dampeners go.

MonsieurAnon this is a fantastic product!

Thank you! It's been an interesting journey learning how to make stuff like this.

I have been researching the use of a high end compact with the P2 (non-vision) and discovered your thread. I am interested mainly in high quality stills rather than video.

Me too. That's how I ended up deciding to make this. There was a few DIY solutions around when I started out, but I wanted something replicatable, and I come from a 3D background so it made sense to print it.

I have done some testing with various cameras and some hack mounts. I am using a HDMI to AV out converter on the camera in combination with the DJI ALV5.8 video TX to get full FPV for shot framing as well as an iOSD mini so I can get flight and battery data on the display. One thing I had not anticipated is that with the camera mounted upside down the video feed is also upside down. Although it is possible to rotate the picture on the monitor this then means that the flight and battery data is also rotated and therefore unreadable. Long story made short, I need to have the camera mounted right side up.

Could you apply that educated mind of yours to a solution? It should be relatively simple to design a rectangular bracket that mounts to your P2 camera mount V2 to get the camera right side up... Pretty please!

This is definitely something that I've thought about, except more for the convenience factor of not having to rotate images in post. It would've made my life a little easier at times.

I think I posted a mockup design a while back that held the camera in the manner of a gimbal, but I put it on the back burner because the weight of the mount itself starts to become an impact at that point. I try to make each part of my mounts adjustable for the different types of cameras that people use, and this is also a problem that I haven't quite been able to overcome, because I have to figure out a way to adjust the height from the dampeners to the hinges and then to the camera platform.

I am one of the people having James make up mounts for me. Have the new one on the way and can't wait for it to arrive. Good to see some Aussie innovation!

My most responsive customer! This guy has helped me come up with solutions to some of the issues with these mounts.

 

[MonsieurAnon]

I've put the mount up on Shapeways for sale.

The product is in beta now, and I do not recommend buying it yet, but at least you can have a look at the required parts.

 

[MonsieurAnon]

I'm now prototyping the upright hinged mount.

 

[MonsieurAnon]

I took some updated shots of the servo gimbal and put them up on the Shapeways page; LINK

 

[MonsieurAnon]

I also took some photos of the prototype flipped, hinged mount. I'm still not satisfied with it. I want to use the Samsung NX-1100 as a baseline 'largest' camera, and the mount is a little too small to turn with that installed.

Here's the album; http://imgur.com/a/PJB55

 

[gspott]

I Whould like to se an RX100 mounted the "right" way also.
Do you think you going to give it a try?

I have an p2 with gp3+ and like to get better pictures so rx100 and gh1 is the way to go