GoPro

41 Articles

The ‘All-Seeing Pi’ Aids Low-Vision Adventurer

March 4, 2017 by 12 Comments

Adventure travel can be pretty grueling, what with the exotic locations and potential for disaster that the typical tourist destinations don’t offer. One might find oneself dangling over a cliff for that near-death-experience selfie or ziplining through a rainforest canopy. All this is significantly complicated by being blind, of course, so a tool like this Raspberry Pi low-vision system would be a welcome addition to the nearly-blind adventurer’s well-worn rucksack.

[Dan] has had vision problems since childhood, but one look at his YouTube channel shows that he doesn’t let that slow him down. When [Dan] met [Ben] in Scotland, [Ben] noticed that he was using his smartphone as a vision aid, looking at the display up close and zooming in to get as much detail as possible from his remaining vision. [Ben] thought he could help, so he whipped up a heads-up display from a Raspberry Pi and a Pi Camera. Mounted to a 3D-printed frame holding a 5″ HDMI display and worn from a GoPro head mount, the camera provides enough detail to help [Dan] navigate, as seen in the video below.

The rig is a bit unwieldy right now, but as proof of concept (and proof of friendship), it’s a solid start. We think a slimmer profile design might help, in which case [Ben] might want to look into this Google Glass-like display for a multimeter for inspiration on version 2.0.

Continue reading “The ‘All-Seeing Pi’ Aids Low-Vision Adventurer” →

Gliding To Underwater Filming Success

February 5, 2017 by 17 Comments

If you are a fan of nature documentaries you will no doubt have been wowed by their spectacular underwater sequences. So when you buy a GoPro or similar camera and put it in a waterproof case accessory, of course you take it with you when you go swimming. Amazing footage and international documentary stardom awaits!

Of course, your results are disappointing. The professionals have years of experience and acquired skill plus the best equipment money can buy, and you just have your hand, and a GoPro. The picture is all over the place, and if there is a subject it’s extremely difficult to follow.

[Steve Schmitt] has an answer to this problem, and it’s a refreshingly simple one. He’s built an underwater glider to which he attaches his camera and launches across the submerged vista he wishes to film. Attached to a long piece of line for retrieval, it is set to glide gently downwards at a rate set by the position of the camera on its boom.

Construction is extremely simple. The wing is a delta-shaped piece of corrugated plastic roofing sheet, while the fuselage is a piece of plastic pipe. A T-connector has the camera mount on it, and this can slide along the fuselage for pre-launch adjustments. It’s that simple, but of course sometimes the best builds are the simple ones. He’s put up a video which you can see below the break, showing remarkable footage of a test flight through a cold-water spring.

Continue reading “Gliding To Underwater Filming Success” →

Talking Arduino Tells GoPro What To Do

January 28, 2017 by 6 Comments

It’s 2017 and even GoPro cameras now come with voice activation. Budding videographers, rest assured, nothing will look more professional than repeatedly yelling at your camera on a big shoot. Hackaday alumnus [Jeremy Cook] heard about this and instead of seeing an annoying gimmick, saw possibilities. Could they automate their GoPro using Arduino-spoken voice commands?

It’s an original way to do automation, for sure. In many ways, it makes sense – rather than mucking around with trying to make your own version of the GoPro mobile app (software written by surfers; horribly buggy) or official WiFi remote, stick with what you know. [Jeremy] decided to pair an Arduino Nano with the ISD1820 voice playback module. This was then combined with a servo-based panning fixture – [Jeremy] wants the GoPro to pan, take a photo, and repeat. The Arduino sets the servo position, then commands the ISD1820 to playback the voice command to take a picture, before rotating again.

[Jeremy] reports that it’s just a prototype at this stage, and works only inconsistently. This could perhaps be an issue of intelligibility of the recorded speech, or perhaps a volume issue. It’s hard to argue that a voice control system will ever be as robust as remote controlling a camera over WiFi, but it just goes to show – there’s never just one way to get the job done. We’ve seen people go deeper into GoPro hacking though – check out this comprehensive guide on how to pwn your GoPro.

3D Printed GoPro Toy Car Mount

November 24, 2016 by 7 Comments

There’s been a spate of YouTube videos of people strapping GoPro cameras onto things recently. [Ruiz] at [Adafruit] is looking to contribute to this trend with this tutorial on 3D printing a GoPro Session toy car mount. The entire toy car mount is 3D printed, except for the axles, which are made of the unprinted filament with melted ends to hold the wheels in place.

The part of the mount that fits around the camera is printed in a flexible filament (think Ninjaflex), so it holds on tightly to the GoPro and can be used as a bumper as well. The car that fits into the base of the camera sleeve is designed to run on Hot Wheels track so that you can lay out your shots and keep the subject in frame. It’s a neat design that could be useful for creating an interesting point of view in a video.

If you have hotwheel, a GoPro (or other tiny camera), and 3D printer this is the project that will get you through the holiday without the kids driving you crazy. Good luck dear hackers.

Continue reading “3D Printed GoPro Toy Car Mount” →

Time Lapse Rig Puts GoPro Into Orbit – In Your Shop

August 23, 2016 by 11 Comments

The combination of time-lapse photography and slow camera panning can be quite hypnotic – think of those cool sunset to nightfall shots where the camera slowly pans across a cityscape with car lights zooming by. [Frank Howarth] wanted to replicate such shots in his shop, and came up with this orbiting overhead time-lapse rig for his GoPro.

[Frank] clearly cares about the photography in his videos. Everything is well lit, he uses wide-open apertures for shallow depth of field shots, and the editing and post-production effects are top notch. So a good quality build was in order for this rig, which as the video below shows, will be used for overhead shots during long sessions at the lathe and other machines. The gears for this build were designed with [Matthias Wandel]’s gear template app and cut from birch plywood with a CNC router. Two large gears and two small pinions gear down the motor enough for a slow, smooth orbit. The GoPro is mounted on a long boom and pointed in and down; the resulting shots are smooth and professional looking, with the money shot being that last look at [Frank]’s dream shop.

If you haven’t seen [Frank]’s YouTube channel, you might want to check it out. While his material of choice is dead tree carcasses, his approach to projects and the machines and techniques he employs are great stuff. We featured his bamboo Death Star recently, and if you check out his CNC router build, you’ll see [Frank] is far from a one-trick pony.

Continue reading “Time Lapse Rig Puts GoPro Into Orbit – In Your Shop” →

Drones, Clever Hacks, And CG Come Together For Star Wars Fan Film

August 11, 2016 by 12 Comments

We weren’t certain if this Star Wars fan film was out kind of thing until we saw the making of video afterwards. They wanted to film a traditional scene in a new way. The idea was to take some really good quadcopter pilots, give them some custom quadcopters, have them re-enact a battle in a scenic location, and then use some movie magic to bring it all together.

The quadcopters themselves are some of those high performance racing quadcopters with 4K video cameras attached. The kind of thing that has the power to weight ratio of a rocket ship. Despite what the video implies, they are unfortunately not TIE Fighter shaped. After a day of flying and a few long hikes to retrieve the expensive devices after inevitable crashes (which, fortunately, provided some nice footage), the next step was compositing.

However, how to trick the viewer into believing they were in a X-Wing quadcopter? A cheap way to do it would be to spend endless hours motion tracking and rendering a cockpit in place. It won’t look quite real. The solution they came up with is kind of dumb and kind-of brilliant. Mount a 3D printed cockpit on a 2×4 with a GoPro. Play the flight footage on a smartphone while holding the contraption. Try to move the cockpit in the same direction as the flight. We’re not certain if it was a requirement to also make whooshing and pew pew laser noises while doing so, but it couldn’t hurt.

In the end it all came together to make a goofy, yet convincingly good fan film. Nice work! Videos after the break.

Continue reading “Drones, Clever Hacks, And CG Come Together For Star Wars Fan Film” →

Where (Almost) No GoPro Has Gone Before

May 18, 2016 by 29 Comments

What would it be like to ride a six foot rocket to nearly 400,000 feet at Mach 5.5? Thanks to UP Areospace and some GoPro cameras, you can find out.

The rocket was a test for the Maraia Capsule project. Mach 5.5, for reference, is 3,800MPH. It appears several different GoPro cameras took the footage. You can see the upward travel, some great views of Earth, and the return on the video below.

Continue reading “Where (Almost) No GoPro Has Gone Before” →