Universal dampened camera mount

[MonsieurAnon]

gspott;

The Medium gimbal style camera mount is already on Shapeways. I presently do not have an RX-100 so I cannot do good product shots, however I have measured this mount with the camera in place and have determined that there is enough room for it to turn. I can arrange a private sale with you if you'd prefer, and I will guarantee right here, that if the printed parts that I send you do not fit and allow horizontal to vertical rotation of your camera, I will send you an adjusted mount free of charge. I will however need to know which model of the RX-100 you are using, as I believe they differ slightly in size.

If you can send me a private message with the following:

Shipping address, paypal email address, camera model and colour preferences I can have the product sent to you within 1 business day.

 

[gspott]

But how do you take pictures? Auto take pictures every 1-5 sek?
I whant to have a remote shutter like dronexpert.nl expensive rx100 mount.

 

[MonsieurAnon]

I just spray and pray. I've got a little 3D printed device that holds my shutter down.

 

[MonsieurAnon]

The servo mount is out of beta and available now on Shapeways at; http://shpws.me/z0K3

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DiZz-jYcznk[/youtube]

 

[Teddyen]

I'm trying to find a solution to get my NEX6 up in the air with a Phantom 2, with the correct side up (not upside down). Have you made any progress on it lately, or do you know of any mounts that work fairly good almost out of the box? I do not need a servo to adjust the angle, as long as I can adjust it manually. A thought would be to use the hot-shoe instead of the tripod screw. I'm an industrial designer and can certainly begin to model something from the ground up, but I would prefer not to spend so much time on it. Still, I could try to help out!

 

[MonsieurAnon]

This mount; http://shpws.me/z5kK is suited for cameras up to 114x63x38mm. This is the size of the Samsung NX-1100.

The NEX6 is 120x67x43mm. I can increase the size of this mount for you and sell it via private sale if you commit to and pay for the mount before I make the design changes, however I cannot guarantee that a Phantom can carry such a large camera, and would recommend that you also buy extended landing gear of one variety or another as well.

Consider this:

The Phantom 2 weighs 900g and has a max take off weight of 1400g. I fly with the Samsung NX-1100, which is 390g with the kit 20-50mm lens, battery & SD card. I use a 50g mount. My TOW is 1,340g and I get limited performance and flight time.

The upright mount weighs approximately 70g. The NEX6 weighs 290g without a lens or battery.

If you're using the V2 Phantom 2, with it's better motors, props and ESCs you may just be able to handle the load, but I don't want to sell someone a product that they cannot use.

 

[MonsieurAnon]

Recently a customer contacted me with a special request regarding this project. They wanted to be able to fit the mount to their particular gimbal. They gave me the measurements via email and I printed and sent them this:

 

[Teddyen]

This mount; http://shpws.me/z5kK is suited for cameras up to 114x63x38mm. This is the size of the Samsung NX-1100.

The NEX6 is 120x67x43mm. I can increase the size of this mount for you and sell it via private sale if you commit to and pay for the mount before I make the design changes, however I cannot guarantee that a Phantom can carry such a large camera, and would recommend that you also buy extended landing gear of one variety or another as well.

Consider this:

The Phantom 2 weighs 900g and has a max take off weight of 1400g. I fly with the Samsung NX-1100, which is 390g with the kit 20-50mm lens, battery & SD card. I use a 50g mount. My TOW is 1,340g and I get limited performance and flight time.

The upright mount weighs approximately 70g. The NEX6 weighs 290g without a lens or battery.

If you're using the V2 Phantom 2, with it's better motors, props and ESCs you may just be able to handle the load, but I don't want to sell someone a product that they cannot use.

Hi! Sorry, I didn't see your reply until now, and the e-mail alert for the PM ended up in spam!

Anyway, I will fly it on an PH2 V2, and this is my approx weight calculations:
NEX6: 287g
Battery for NEX: 42g
SD Card: 2g
16mm lens: 67g
iOSD: 14g
AVL58 Lite: 14g + 10g antenna
HD->AV Converter: 5g
Cables, maybe FPV Hub: ~15g

Before the mount, this equals to about 456g, which leaves very little for the mount...

As I didn't see your post, my first plan is to mod a GoPro mount, and attach it to the NEX through the flash hot shoe. I believe this will add less weight than anything else, if I don't need landing legs extension. The compass is now integrated into them, so I don't know how much wiggle-room there is in the cable. I appreciate your effort, and will get back to you with an update when I've tried the GoPro-mod.

 

[MonsieurAnon]

With your goPro mod, I suggest trying to do everything you can to get rapid shutter speeds. Go high ISO and large aperture where possible. This will help deal with the undampened / non-centre balanced camera.

 

[Tekkie]

Has anyone confirmed having one of these working with the rx100? I definetly need one

 

[Teddyen]

With your goPro mod, I suggest trying to do everything you can to get rapid shutter speeds. Go high ISO and large aperture where possible. This will help deal with the undampened / non-centre balanced camera.

Thanks for your input, my plan is to aim for around 1/1000s shutter speed, but I don't really know what it takes yet. I'm a professional photographer (see http://www.teodortomter.no if you're curious!), so I hope I'll figure something out. In broad daylight or normal clouds, I guess it should be perfectly fine at ISO 100-400 and f/2.8-f/5.6 at 1/1000. The lens will be almost perfectly centered on the drone (left-to-right wise), as it sits directly underneath the hot shoe, but the camera CG will be a few centimeters towards the right.

Right now, I'm most worried about the weight.

 

[MonsieurAnon]

Tekkie; My friend Tom at Droner Systems has confirmed the rx-100 works with the mount and has some videos of it working with his solution for the camera shutter. He on-sells the mount as a package deal with the required wiring for approximately $240usd.

Thanks for your input, my plan is to aim for around 1/1000s shutter speed, but I don't really know what it takes yet. I'm a professional photographer (see http://www.teodortomter.no if you're curious!), so I hope I'll figure something out.

~1,000 should be great, and I am curious. My next venture after designing all these parts for people is going to require photographers around the world, with quadrotors and compact cameras, so... with your permission can I put you in my database?

Right now, I'm most worried about the weight.

Centre of gravity is in my opinion a bigger concern than maximum take off weight. When I approached ~1400g I had a lot of difficulty getting the P2 to fly in a reasonable and safe manner. There was a lot of induced vibration as it attempted to react and counter-react to the offset weight. Once I took greater care with centre of gravity, it reacted more cleanly. In fact, I found that the best mounting option for heavy loads was facing straight down, because the camera's body ends up closer to the Phantom's shell.

Anyway, just take care. I never crashed when prototyping, and never lost a camera either.

 

[Droner_Aus]

Tekkie; My friend Tom at Droner Systems has confirmed the rx-100 works with the mount and has some videos of it working with his solution for the camera shutter. He on-sells the mount as a package deal with the required wiring for approximately $240usd.

We sure do. Check out http://dronersystems.com/

Discuss on our thread at viewtopic.php?f=9&t=32521

 

[Teddyen]

~1,000 should be great, and I am curious. My next venture after designing all these parts for people is going to require photographers around the world, with quadrotors and compact cameras, so... with your permission can I put you in my database?

Of course! Now, I'm curious what your next venture will be, but I guess you won't share it quite yet.

Centre of gravity is in my opinion a bigger concern than maximum take off weight. When I approached ~1400g I had a lot of difficulty getting the P2 to fly in a reasonable and safe manner. There was a lot of induced vibration as it attempted to react and counter-react to the offset weight. Once I took greater care with centre of gravity, it reacted more cleanly. In fact, I found that the best mounting option for heavy loads was facing straight down, because the camera's body ends up closer to the Phantom's shell.

Hmmm, yeah... To balance it better between the front-back, I guess I can drill a set of new holes underneath the battery tray to mount it further back. Time will show, I still haven't got all the parts yet.

 

[Droner_Aus]

Centre of gravity is in my opinion a bigger concern than maximum take off weight. When I approached ~1400g I had a lot of difficulty getting the P2 to fly in a reasonable and safe manner. There was a lot of induced vibration as it attempted to react and counter-react to the offset weight. Once I took greater care with centre of gravity, it reacted more cleanly. In fact, I found that the best mounting option for heavy loads was facing straight down, because the camera's body ends up closer to the Phantom's shell.

I have operated with the original Phantom Vision in the 1500g range. Performance is decreased but not unusable. The newer versions with better ESCs, Motors and Props handle the weight fine.

 

[MonsieurAnon]

Teddyen; it's still too formative a concept to really start talking about, plus I distract myself from my current task when I begin to do so.

 

[Teddyen]

I understand, finish your current projects first.

Droner_Aus: I've flown a regular P2 at around 1500g as well, did a series of tests even in windy conditions. It handled gusty winds of around 10m/s surprisingly well, but in 34C / 93F, the motors got hotter than I was comfortable with. Afraid of maybe burning an ESC, I don't have a clue of how much they can handle.

 

[Droner_Aus]

Droner_Aus: I've flown a regular P2 at around 1500g as well, did a series of tests even in windy conditions. It handled gusty winds of around 10m/s surprisingly well, but in 34C / 93F, the motors got hotter than I was comfortable with. Afraid of maybe burning an ESC, I don't have a clue of how much they can handle.

Yes the motors can get hot. We recently flew in 40C (104F) heat in the middle of the Australian desert with a ground level at 1,600' so we were flying up to 2,000 feet. This was with our current set up an the machine was working hard. The motors got hot but the Phantom performed well. We regularly operating in hot and humid conditions above 30C. This was the biggest test we gave it and it worked well.

 

[MonsieurAnon]

The Universal mount is now updated to version 2.1, adding support for the Phantom 1's mounting holes.

On Shapeways

 

[MonsieurAnon]

This is slightly off topic, but a user of this forum recently sent me some photos of a black nylon print of a new part that I've put on Shapeways, for the H3-3D gimbal. The print looks really nice. If you're into the aesthetics of this sort of thing, I'd highly recommend getting your prints in black from now on!

Here's why: