overbyte

I've become interested in taking videos of my bike trips, including camping with my bike. The 3rd person point of view (POV) videos posted by "Collin M" on YouTube have inspired me to do what he did -- create a camera mount so the camera can be located behind and above me. I purchased the tiny wide-angle Mobius action camera, which is described elsewhere in this forum, and took a test video yesterday with a handlebar mount. The video isn't bad from the handlebar, but I like the POV where the video seems to be flying behind me, showing my body as I pedal as well as the immediate surroundings and vista. Here's my posting in a different thread, which shows Collin's mounting and various examples of using it versus other points of view: https://www.bikeforums.net/electronic...l#post16737629

Early this morning I put my camera pole onto the seatpost of my red folding bike. Here are some photos:


The final photo shows the waterproof phone enclosure on the handlebar. I have been using this for a small solar battery pack (5000 mAh capacity) which I use to keep my cell phone charged in the small handlebar bag, by running the USB charging cord from the solar battery into the bag and plugging it into the phone. The enclosure is on a ball joint, so I can tilt it toward the sun simply by pushing it, while I ride, when the position of the sun changes significantly. The blue ball is the end of a canopy bungee which I put through the wire outlet of the enclosure and loop the stretchy cord around the handlebar clamp of the enclosure's ball joint. It sits behind the solar panel battery (which I removed for this photo). I use the bungee as a safety tether, since I once had the enclosure fall off of the ball joint. The tether will at least keep it dangling until I can fix the ball mount. Since the Mobius camera battery has enough charge for only 80 minutes of video, I'll be using the solar charger (or buying an additional one) to power the camera on long time-lapse videos of rides which exceed 80 minutes. I'm running out of handlebar real-estate, so I may need to add a T-bar extension to hold more gadgets, or I'll put the solar charger for the camera onto the camera pole itself.

My other thread post describes how I put this together. I'm not sure this will be rigid enough. The pole certainly is rigid, but the whole thing bounces more than I expected even though all of the wingnuts are tight. It may be because the pole is hollow, so it flexes inside the bottom clamp. I may need to add a better pole filler to support the grip of the clamp. I'll see how it looks on videos, which I'll post here later today.

Looigi

Adding a second bracket lower down between the pole and the seat post so that the pole is support at two points ~15-20cm apart would likely improve the rigidity of the connection between the two, though it looks like it would interfere with your saddle bag.

overbyte

Correct. I had that as my Plan B if the pole was too bouncy. I'm sure the pole itself is rigid but the whole assembly still bounces more than I'd like. I did some more test videos today, on 2 bikes with the same pole setup. Comparing with the handlebar mounted video, there's definitely more bounce in the pole setup. It seems to be movement at the clamp to pole connection. So, tomorrow, first I'll add a longer filler piece inside the bottom of the tube where the clamp grabs, to stiffen that connection. If that doesn't make significant improvement, I'm going to try adding 2 struts from the seat rails to the pole. If that's not good enough, instead I'll rig up a second brace from pole to rear rack, removing the rack trunk bag. I'll still be able to mount rear panniers and maybe a small thing on top of the rack, not a large trunk bag. I'm going to add 2 struts actually, making a rear triangle with the rack being the base of the triangle and a strut attached to the left and to the right of the rack. That should brace against not only up and down bounce, but side to side also. This really complicates removal of the setup when taking a bus or train trip, but that may be the tradeoff for more stable video from the 3rd person POV.

dorkypants

What we cyclists need is a camera-equipped drone that will follow us and shoot video of us as we ride.

overbyte

I removed the pole from the clamp and found that it is indented where the clamp gripped it. The plastic plug that I put into the end of the tube was too loose and too short to back up the thin stainless steel tube. That allowed the tube to flex up and down in the clamp. I'm going to the hardware store for a better filler, perhaps a wood dowel or short steel pipe.

Here's a temporary short video draft of about 2 minutes of my riding through downtown Santa Cruz, California, with the bouncy tube mount:
I notice that I tilted the camera down enough (pitch) but failed to level it left-to-right (roll) and didn't quite get my head in the center (yaw). I'll pay more attention to the positioning on the next test. The bounce isn't too bad on these rather level streets at low speed, but it's more obvious at high speed on rougher road.

By the way, this was taken with the factory settings unchanged, so the date is still wrong. There is a setting to turn on WDR (wide-dynamic-range) which I'll try later. It is OFF in the factory presets. WDR brings out the detail in the shadows, which would have been a benefit to this test video.

overbyte

Today I braced the wood pole using a U-shaped piece of steel tubing I had laying around, plus some rubber-coated support clamps from local hardware store, anchored to the rear rack of my folding bike. It's a solid, sturdy aluminum rack, on an aluminum folding bike. Yet, the videos bounced even worse than before on my full-size steel touring bike with just the stainless steel pole mounted to the seat post only. I'll try the wood pole with this brace attached to the rear rack of that touring bike, which also is staineless steel. I noticed that the whole assembly oscillates on the folding bike when I tap it with my hand, not just the pole flexing, so the folder is just too flexible for a 3rd person POV mount, it seems. I'll see if the stiffer bike rack on the touring bike makes a difference tomorrow. I'll also go back to the stainless steel pole.

Here's the brace on the folding bike:

01 CAt Man Do

Nope, too expensive. Trained monkeys...that's the answer. You make a mini para-sail and train the monkey to hold the camera steady as he flies behind you. Just don't pass any banana stands. Monkeys are distracted easily.