Monday, April 6, 2009

Sew What?

A side project of mine has been to get a lot of interesting video footage of Los Alamos from many different perspectives. This has started slow, but it's coming along.
One of the more ambitious segments is a working dash cam to capture the landscape as one drives through it. Early attempts suffered from car vibration and window glare. The glare solution is forthcoming; I may have solved the vibration issue this past weekend.
During my trial run I realized that I needed something to hold the camera that was both heavy enough to stay in place but soft enough to damp the shaking of my poor ol' Ford Focus. The ideal object would be cloth, with a bean-bag type bottom but a cotton-stuffed top. With a prototype in mind and my dear wife assisting, I took to the sewing machine to see what I could do.
Spoiler Alert: Sewing is not as easy as it looks. I swore a lot. In the end, I believe I am much closer to instituting my personal dash cam. I am hopeful that I can have some test footage up here soon.

3 comments:

  1. They make GPS holders that are pretty similar to what you're talking about. Instead of mounting to the window, it's a bean bag thingy that holds it in place on your dash. In case your sewing doesn't go so well :)

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  2. That's a good idea. The sewing part went well enough such that I do have my jimmy-rigged camera holder; if it doesn't work well then I may turn to commercial products. It just seems cooler when you do it yourself. ;)

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  3. I saw this the other day. I don't know what style camera you are using. I was able to set my web cam right on the dash when I recorded one of the honeymoon videos and I didn't have terrible vibrations.

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