Some swimming, working, product design and 3D Printing.
We are having a heat wave so today was around 36 degrees Celsius. I had to swim home today after the family had to leave when we were swimming. Watch the video for some swimming with the family.
I also design and 3D print a bracket for my Sony Action Camera. Now I have great sound with my action camera. The brackets fits the Sony Action Camera and allows me to connect it to a tripod as well as external microphones and video lights. Watch how I designed and 3D Printed it.
In this episode I also go to a great coffee shop in Parys, South Africa, where I live. I like this coffee shop as it has great wifi, affordable prices and it is a great place to get work done.
2016 12 01 Episode 1
Good morning. It is the first of December. First off for the day is this little man is heading off to school. Hello Bastian. Yeah. Then I need to quickly get some work done. Probably the best productive place to be is at a coffee shop if I quickly need to get a couple of hours of work done. Then there’s no distractions like I would have at home, also the coffee comes to me which is a bonus. So that’s the plan and then round about lunch time I will try and squeeze something active or outside in. I’ll see you then.
So I’m back home. I had a productive morning. Got a lot of work done and some new websites are up and right now I decided not to go and do something active over lunch. I’m going to have a quick break and then start working again and rather do something active after work. Reason being we’ve got a heat wave in Parys so right now the temperature is something like 34 degrees Celsius which is just too hot to be outside right now. So after work I’m hoping to get something active done.
Ok. So the work day is done and it’s still over 30 degrees Celsius so we’re going for a quick swim. It’s quite handy because here in Parys, where we live, we have got the Vaal River and it’s quite close to our house. So taking the family we will drive down to the river. They will probably leave early and I’ll just swim back because the River Flows quite close to our house.
I just swam home after Bastian and Michelle decided to leave early during our swim. It was fun the. The river actually flows quite close to our house so it’s easy to swim from the suspension bridge back to our house. It is a little bit rocky and shallow so a life jacket is always good and I had fun. Couple of mosquitoes and gnats around here so trying not to get bitten. So I won’t be standing still for too long but what an awesome swim after a 36 degree Celsius day. Really heated today. We are in the middle of a bit of a heat wave so it’s always good to cool down and get back home.
Hey, welcome back. So this evening I finished off the project that I was busy with for a while and background is I’ve got this little Sony Action Camera that I really like and it takes good HD quality video. Quite a nice camera. Very affordable as well.
The only problem is that inside this waterproof housing is the only way that it can mount onto anything including a tripod. So the tripod screw is on the bottom of this waterproof housing and the problem with that is the microphones on this camera actually are actually sitting on the front and it even includes an external microphone port at the bottom which will even give better sound. But neither the little port at the bottom or the stereo mic at the front is an option inside this waterproof housing. So it basically muffles the sound and also you obviously can’t get a plug in, so not a good idea for getting good sound.
What I did do then is go to CAD and make up a drawing of this camera first. Just a crude little drawing so that I can then design something that fits onto this without the waterproof housing. So after drawing the camera I drew a clamp that would hold the camera and some attachment points. Ok. So the basic idea was this little clamp will hold the camera in the middle and then as you saw on the drawing its got two hot shoe or the in this case cold shoe adapters so I could put a video light on the top, I could put an external microphone on the top like a Rode video mic. Anything along those lines and even an adapter to a tripod which is what I’ve got on the other side. So I printed little 3-D printed tripod adaptor. It’s got a quarter 20 nut inside and I can now screw a tripod to this. This is just little mini tripod and any tripod will do. So it goes onto a tripod. The camera fits into it. Which is quite nice. There you go. So with this setup I can now fit either a light or a microphone to the top and it also improves the actual onboard sound because now the mics are open.