Zheng's GoPro Gubbinses

Last crawled date: 6 years, 2 months ago

A month ago the gadget stork dropped off a shiny new GoPro Hero3+ at Zheng Labs' Shipping and Receiving South entrance. Ostensibly it was to be used for time lapse photography, but while the dwarves were setting up tripods and lighting in The Forge, my son strapped the camera to his head and took it down the water slide.
 


We took advantage of this delay (that kid won't get out of the water until his lips are blue) to craft a few GoPro accessories. 
 

First: a tripod plate compatible with the excellent entry-level EXPLORERV Vista Explorer Tripod. This plate has a dovetailed slot so that you can swap out either an (included) GoPro case mounting stub or, and this was a feature request direct from the dwarven foreman at The Forge, a mounting stub that's compatible with 1/2" EMT electrical conduit.


Now you can put your GoPro on a tripod and, using the conduit as an extension, get really close to the action. 
 


(The creation of 10' conduit selfie sticks is left as an exercise for the adventurous reader.)
 


But here's the thing: The GoPro is a great little camera, but it's only got a 2.5 hour battery life. If you're doing an extended 3D printing timelapse, you've got to keep it charged via USB.

Barring some accident of quantum superpositon there's no way you're getting a mini-USB plug through the side of the waterproof case.



So we hammered together a naked GoPro mounting bracket, too, and included conduit and tripod-plate variations thereof. 
 


A thumbscrew and nut combination keeps the conduit in place. You'll want to super glue the nut into the mounting stubs before inserting the conduit.