2008 Outback rear view mirror grapple and platform

Last crawled date: 4 years, 2 months ago

This is an original design, borne out of necessity. I have a (fairly expensive) dash camera that was being held in place via a suction cup. Occasionally, that suction cup would fail, and my camera would tumble down across my front console and onto the floorboard. I needed something better before my camera ended up in pieces.
So, I designed this grapple to address it. It is custom molded to my 2008 Subaru Outback's rear view mirror, which has auto-dimming and Homelink. The "mirror_grapple" object provides dowel holes for the "adapter_platform" object to slot into, which actually holds it in place very tightly when the two grapple sides are positioned properly, with their bottom "hook" slotted over the two depressions (see the images).
For my particular requirements (that of saving the life of my dash cam), I recreated from scratch the "ball_socket_adapter" and the "locking_ring" that the suction cup provided for holding the car camera. I then glued the "ball_socket_adapter" to the "adapter_platform", and used the "locking_ring" to hold the camera ball socket tightly enough that it doesn't move when the car turns. I have included these additional items here, but the grapple/platform print can be done to provide stable support for any other item that you may need to attach to your rear view mirror.
I hope others find this useful.