3 Camera Booms For Your Wednesday Afternoon

July 14, 2010 by Jakob Griffith 5 Comments

[Andrew] tipped us off about his Cable Cam built out of some lumber and clothes line. It is small enough to fit into a backpack, includes a safety line and the camera can pan and tilt. A future version is planned with a small remote motor to move the trolley more effectively.

[Andrew] accidentally linked us to his other Camera Crane, taking the same ‘cheap yet effective’ approach as his Cable Cam. Once again, just some lumber and creative engineering are used to pull this one off.

For those without the ability to weld, check out [Bill Van Loo’s] all wood version of a Camera Crane. Same parallelogram design, without remote video output or central pivot.

Panoramic And Spheric Tripod Rig

July 14, 2010 by Mike Szczys 12 Comments

This simple yet precise build takes your camera for a spin in order to take spherical and multi-row panorama photographs. The rig mounts to a tripod, using two servo motors for motion, producing images that can be stitched together perfectly. An Arduino handles the hardware with an LCD interface for dialing in the settings.It’s not the cheapest way to get 360 degree shots but the example images are amazing.

[Thanks Juan]

Cameras Perch On Power Lines, Steal Electricity

June 28, 2010 by Mike Szczys 74 Comments

[Tim] let us know about a video outlining some covert camera devices the Air Force is developing (dead link, try the Internet Archive version). The video takes a lot of time to explain induction to those who’ve never heard of it but we liked to see the bird-like concept animations. They’ve already developed cameras that will clamp on to power lines in order to use induction as a power source. Shown in the video is an eight-rotor quadcopter they’re hoping to use to deliver the camera covertly. But the animations show a winged robot similar to a hawk that has a camera for a head. Having seen some of the other flying devices in development this may not actually be that far off.

Now You See Me, Now You Don’t, Face Detection Scripts

June 27, 2010 by Jakob Griffith 19 Comments

Straight out of Ghost in the Shell, the Laughing Man makes his appearance in these security camera shots. [William Riggins] wrote us to let us know about his teams Famicam scripts. After taking a screen shot, faces are detected and counted, ‘anonymized’, and the final image is uploaded to Twitter.

The process is rather simple, and sure beats wearing a bunch of white reflective camouflage. All that’s left is detecting specific faces to make anonymous, and of course uploading the script to every camera in the world. Easy, right?

RC Car Taunts Man’s Best Friend

June 2, 2010 by Mike Szczys 18 Comments

[Arkos] gutted an RC car from his childhood and made it into a dog-taunting remote platform. An Arduino replaces the original circuitry with a Bluetooth module for connectivity. He uses an Xbox 360 controller and has added a small speaker to act as a siren. But for our money it’s the camera that makes this hack. It streams video back to a laptop and because it’s mounted on a couple of servos the left stick controls where the lens is looking. The next evolution should replace the Arduino for a standalone microcontroller but what he’s come up with as a first prototype is delightful. See Fido run in terror after the break.

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Point And Shoot In A Classic Camera Body

May 12, 2010 by Mike Szczys 39 Comments

If you think there’s a gun inside that camera you’ve been fooled. We just like the juxtaposition of the 1940’s era camera with the iconic sidearms. What you see is a point-and-shoot cameras inside of the classic Leica II body (this is actually a Zorki 1 knockoff). It is much like the Canon AE-1 hack but this time there’s plenty of build details.

Digital camera makers try to get the smallest form factor possible and consequently the inside of those things is a nightmare of tiny parts and intricate connections.The Sony DSC-WX1 is no exception, and even the battery is disassembled to fit inside. See the final product and its features in the video after the break.

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Perfect Spiral, Every Time

April 30, 2010 by Jakob Griffith 20 Comments

[Carmine] let us know about his team’s Automated Football Launcher. Their goal was to combine a football launcher with motion tracking, to allow a player to practice running and catching with the perfect throw. Unfortunately, and we’re not quite sure when, they ended up changing out the Jugs machine for an air cannon, which resulted in the use of foam footballs and the loss of throwing factors such as spiral. Somewhat defeating the purpose but we’ll let it slide; only because we know its going to be shooting potatoes eventually.

The project comes together by using two cameras giving distance and color tracking, combined with a rotating platform (and the best use of garden hose ever), an accurate set-top for their launcher. As seen in the video after the jump, it works out quite nicely. Continue reading “Perfect Spiral, Every Time” →