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Another great CVS camera hack HOW TO…When I first saw the CVS disposable camera, I knew that it would be hacked soon. I also knew that as soon as it was, I would have to buy one, and I knew exactly what I wanted it for: Mountain biking. Here are directions for building a helmet mount for the CVS one-time-use camcorder. Includes photos and a 10 minute trail riding video. Link.
0 thoughts on “How to build a helmet-mounted camera for mountain biking for $35”
After a quick back-and-forth via email, Tommy Cheatham, author of the linked site, has in fact fixed the link to the trail riding video for all us cycling fanatics and other curious types.
And for those of you who can’t seem to get a proper refresh right away(like me), the link to the video is here:
http://www.shaolinarts-ky.net/tommy/videos/lock_4_1.wmv
the only thing that worries me about this hack is the bolt that is aimed at your head. If you fell on the camera, it would probably make a nice hole in your skull. (One of the early hangliding pioneers died this way). But that is easy to fix. A bunch of guys at the office here are planning on building these, so thanks for the testing!
Yeah, the bolt through the brain is a bit of concern, but I haven’t come up with a non-brainstabbing way to do it yet.
It’s always a work in progress, though.
Forget the bolt through the brain deal.
Most bike helmets have nice, shiny surfaces on them with assorted ridges and shapes to them. Just wax them up nicely (in a perfect world use “mold release compound†which is just a fancy wax, but even cheap turtle wax works), get some fiber glassing supplies (if you buy just what you need it will be less then $5, and autoparts stores carry kits with everything that you might need and enough materials to do a dozen different things for under $20) and lay some fiberglass over the helmet where you want to mount it. You can use it to make a perfect cast of the shape so that just a minor Velcro strap would hold it in position without moving, and nothing going through the foam padding. If you wanted it attached permanently then just rough up the shiny surface and degrease it instead of waxing.
Secondly, I’d suggest that mounting it to the front rather then the side will result in a more stable picture and better video. If I was doing it I’d probably consider molding or mounting a hollow ridge to the top of the helmet and then making a mount that holds the camera that has a section of something stiff but flexible (cheapest thing would be something like some copper tube used for ice maker installations…) that fits snugly into the opening in the ridge in the top. That would allow you to adjust the camera angle by just bending the copper tube and remove it easily.
For that matter, any more serious helmet (motorcycle, car racing, football…) will have assorted stuff mounted to it’s outside using hardware, in those cases just adapt the existing hardware to hold it.
Hey, maybe I should wear one of these things with the camera going the next time I decide to do something stupid…