DIY steadicam with cheap/easy gimbal

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By Becky Stern
Posted 2010/01/05 @ 8:20 am
Category Art & Design

Tho Bui writes:

I’ve been toying with homemade steadicams lately. The gimbal joint usually gives people a fit. The roundness of the acorn nut fits into the indentation of the opposite screw/nut and freely rotates.

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DIY steadicam, version five

BY Becky Stern

Becky Stern is head of wearable electronics at Adafruit Industries. Her personal site: sternlab.org

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2 Responses to DIY steadicam with cheap/easy gimbal

Kije on January 5th, 2010 at 11:51 am said:

Nice ideas here!

The write up says ” It will not be a tight fit like a true gimbal joint” … whereas that is true, perhaps fitting a suitable coil spring inside the PVC caps assembly would hold the joint together without restricting the movement.

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Allen Yu on January 6th, 2010 at 9:56 am said:

I was real happy with my homemade steadicam, making videos in my kitchen and walking around the house, until I took it on location for a real shoot and it suddenly fell apart. If you build one of these, be sure to test it under real working conditions. With better materials and some re-engineering, I probably could make it work; but I just bought a Glidecam. As impressive as it looks to your friends and family, homemade steadicams don’t hold up under the judgmental glare of the looky-loos. A Russian immigrant who was hanging around said to me, “This is real low-budget, huh?” LOL

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