cable cam DIY? anyone?

jeasus kevin your old!


And I could still out ride you any day of the week :D

That photo is also at about 7am. You can see the pre coffee eyes can't you?

If you can get a ride to nevada city this weekend, we'll be doing a lot of shooting.

Mikko: Understood on the above-cable counterbalance. There's a lot of odd reaching and stretching going on to get the contraption going sometimes. Mounting it above the trolly might cause some serious headaches. I'll be messing around with it this week though. I'll see if I can come up with something practical either way.
 
And I could still out ride you any day of the week :D

That photo is also at about 7am. You can see the pre coffee eyes can't you?

If you can get a ride to nevada city this weekend, we'll be doing a lot of shooting.

Mikko: Understood on the above-cable counterbalance. There's a lot of odd reaching and stretching going on to get the contraption going sometimes. Mounting it above the trolly might cause some serious headaches. I'll be messing around with it this week though. I'll see if I can come up with something practical either way.

on a bike yes you could. ANY day of the week. skis, prolly everyday except sunday. idk bout geting a ride, that would be ****in bitchen but prolly no can do.

yeah i can see those pre coffee eyes haha
 
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R/C cable cam

R/C cable cam

Funny, this reminds me of the first cable cam I created (on a smaller level). Amazing what you can make from your local hardware store..

DSCF2503.jpg


After using the manual cable cam I decided to add some remote control.

cablecam_1_finished.JPG


But the RC drive mechanism was such a pain. Too many gears and mechanisms bogged the motor down and eventually blew out the Speed control. Keep it simple stoopid ! Had to start somewhere

cablecam_3_finished.JPG


This one was completely home made, forward reverse rotation and tilt..

Added some wheelbase for good measure. And it all fits in a backpack!

cablecam4DSCF5730.JPG




Here's version 1

cablerig.JPG



Version 1.1 has some larger 6" diameter clothesline pulleys with cartridge bearings. I can adjust the bearing tension to vary the descending speed. Don't have any pics of that one yet but the chasis is still the same.

Gravity fed, bungee brake stopper, on a 200' climbing rope. Going to buy some static line to try to get rid of some of the bounce.


Some quick and dirty, 'let's see if this works' footage


http://kidwoo.com/images/doc/cablewmv.wmv
 
good call on the rope bikerag. I found some 2,000lb tensile strength, 3/16", pre stretched Nylon rope, 1,000' for $52 a spool that I'm going to use with my system. So much better than wire.
 
I found some 2,000lb tensile strength, 3/16", pre stretched Nylon rope, 1,000' for $52 a spool that I'm going to use with my system. So much better than wire.


Even prestretched, it seems that diameter would still have some elasticity.

If not, that's a great deal. Where did you find it?
 
I found some 1/4" poly rope that was pretty cheap, like $30 or so for 200ft.. (local hardware store).. At a 150 ft span you need to tension the crap out of it to reduce the sag, but I also found that more rope tension makes the cable cam more steady.. I think the 1/4" rope I have is good for 1700 lbs.. Spectra would be the ultimate, but pricey..

Any Questions on the setup let me know. If anyone else has built there own cam I would be psyched to post it up on cablecam.org. So far dvxuser was the only other site that I found with decent cable cam info.. DIY cable cams are not going to be as good as some 5000$ a day unit you can rent, but who has that kind of scratch to invest in a amateur film? Might take a few more takes but you can get some good footage with something thrown together in your basement + about $500 in parts or so.
Jon
 
Are you using a full 1000 ft run?? If so be carefull on the sag. The longer the span and the heavier the cable cam, the more tension you need. You can calculate the required tension pretty easy with some basic physics if you know the span, sag and cable cam weight..

good call on the rope bikerag. I found some 2,000lb tensile strength, 3/16", pre stretched Nylon rope, 1,000' for $52 a spool that I'm going to use with my system. So much better than wire.
 
Are you using a full 1000 ft run?? If so be carefull on the sag. The longer the span and the heavier the cable cam, the more tension you need. You can calculate the required tension pretty easy with some basic physics if you know the span, sag and cable cam weight..

No, I wont use the full 1,000 ft. I'll probably only use maybe 300ft of it. But, it comes in 1,000 ft reels. I'm going to get it and do some safe experimenting with it.
 
Im looking to make a cable cam for when we hit handrails snowboarding. Its for sure not gonna be as technical as some of these, with motorized pan and tilt. I dont even know how ide start with something like that. Thats pretty cool that you can put that all together and make it work...Either alot of smarts or alot of time. Or maybe a lil of both...
 
Cable cam update

Cable cam update

Had to make 2 more changes to the cable cam, I was on a roll.. I ditched the servo city pan tilt and made my own. I made the tilt rotate around the camera's center of gravity. WORKS AWESOME! ALso added a 4th servo for
camera start stop.

Check out this video - Keep in mind this was the first real test in the woods with riders. I learned alot, next time it will be even better for sure. Takes time to get used to timing, speed, rotation tilt. Practice practice practice..
http://www.cablecam.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=25

Here is a pic of the latest (more pics on cablecam.org)
DSCF5843.JPG
 
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