Category Archives: Photography

Stealth Selfie Stick for Insta 360 X series cameras

3Dprinting, Photography, , , ,

I recently had the opportunity to go to two major league baseball games in two different cities within the course of 2 weeks. I love my Insta 360 X5 (I had the X2 before) and take it everywhere. Fortunately I checked online before I went, because they forbid selfie sticks, and it would have been confiscated.

For the second game, I took the 360 camera and a small screw on tripod base as a kind of handle, but the result is a really long arm in the pictures!

I checked and they do allow walking canes. I thought, what if I made a cane into a selfie stick?

The first step was to buy a cane, and i found this one for less than $7 on Amazon. I removed the tip (ended up scratching the shaft a little by prying off the end with a screwdriver.)

I then modeled an insert that took a 1/4 20 screw and nut. (all the step files and FreeCAD source are here.)

I made a little plastic washer to go on top (e-6000 was used to glue the parts in):

It wouldn’t do to press the rubber foot directly onto the screw, as it would push it into the shaft, so I made a little cap to fit inside the foot:

And with the cap on, an ordinary folding cane…

To prove it functions as an “invisible” selfie stick, Here’s a quick pic. There’s nothing magic about the invisible part, as long as the stick isn’t too wide, it fits within the “seam” from stitching two 180’s together. You can see the handle, but then the hands are always a little fused together anyway…

First Video, and a few Quadcopter lessons learned

FamilyFun, Photography, Quadcopters

I had a lot of fun flying the 3DR Solo in the last couple of weeks, but after a while you just want to DO something. Until I develop my “copilot” add on board to activate some cool add ons and sensors, photography is the obvious thing, and my bundle even came with the stabilization gimbal. I was planning on buying a “fauxpro” from MCM electronics but found out the gimbal is really “locked” in to Genuine GoPro ™. I could probably hack it, but the biggest advantage of using a real GoPro is the expansion connector on the back allows you to start and stop video, take pics etc. from the remote. So I gritted my teeth and plunked down $250 at Costco.com on a GoPro Hero4 bundle that included an extra battery and SD card.

Here’s my first flight video:

I’m very pleased with the video (shot at 1080p and 60 fps) though obviously, my control and shot planning skills need some work.

Shortly after this, I crashed and trashed 4 propellers (ouch$). I was running it on “cable cam” where you fly to different positions, record them and then you can run the quadcopter between those positions like it was on a cable. When I ran it to the end of the “Cable” it ended up being about 5 feet higher than when it started, got tangled in some wires, and crashed upside down. It sat there and ground the propellers to dust, as I didn’t know how to turn off the motors until it detected the crash (maybe a minute later).

Lesson Learned: Don’t expect GPS to get you exactly to a spot (it’s only good +- 3 meters at best) and don’t fly in a confined airspace unless you are really good and manually controlling it!

Other Lesson Learned: RTFM, except there was no FM! Well, online there is, and a quick web search revealed holding down a and b buttons together will cause an emergency motor stop.