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Making, baking, and (un-)breaking things in Southeast Michigan.

Category: making things

iSight Tripod Adapters For Sale

September 19, 2005

 iSight Tripod Adapters For Sale
US$30 Shipped †

As I’ve posted about here in the past, I’ve been manufacturing some adapters which allow one to mount an Apple iSight on a normal camera tripod. Well, they are finally finished and available for sale.

A few months ago I was desperately looking for a way to mount my iSight on a camera tripod so that I could take stop motion video out my window. Well, there seemed to be no commercial options available beyond a simple, and quite expensive, plastic clip which required one to provide their own Firewire cable. In order to resolve this need, I went into my workshop and built something better. Becuase of the interest in the adapters after I showed them off around here, I decided to make some for sale.

As these were hand made by me in my workshop, they are limited to a quantity of 39 pieces for sale. At this point I have no plans to make additional pieces beyond this first run.

Anyway, I’ve personally hand-made these adapters to meet my needs, and they include the following features:

· 15′ Firewire Cable
· 1/4-20 Threaded Base (Standard Tripod Mount)
· Solid construction from impact-resistant plastic

All of these adapters have been tested and are assured to work. So buy one, fire up your favorite iSight-compatible software (iChat AV, QuickTime Pro, EvoCam, etc), point the camera at whatever you’d like to record, and (thanks to the 15′ cable) leave your Mac a safe distance away.

Be it watching the world out the window, keeping an eye on the pets, seeing who is coming in the door, or anything more personal, these iSight Tripod Adapters finally allow you to point your iSight wherever you want!

Along the right side are photos of the adapter in a few positions. Click those images for larger copies, or click on here (photo gallery retired) for a bunch of pictures of these adapters. Please note that the tripod and tripod bracket are pictured for illustrative purposes only. This sale is for one adapter with integrated cable. The additional hardware is pictured because I want to show how the adapter can be used with a standard tripod.

So, if you’d like one, go ahead and click the button down below to send payment (US$30) and I’ll get your new iSight Tripod Adapter shipped out to you right away.

If the button is missing, I have sold out of the adapters. Sorry!




† US addresses, PO Boxes, and Military Addresses Only. Please contact me for international shipping rates before sending payment.
 

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Duct Tape!

September 15, 2005


Click for more…

Well, I thought making a duct tape dress form was surreal. Nope… Kneeling beneath said form as it sits on a stand, stuffing it and attempting to establish a posture and appropriate body lumps is surreal.

That said, the dress form is done, and I’m glad… I’m really, really tired, and I think it’s time for a wee bit of dinner.

There are a few more pictures of the dress form:

· Detail of the base of the stand. Yes, it’s a modified Christmas tree stand.
· The PVC tee which supports the form from the shoulders.
· My bathrobe on the form to show that it can hold some weight. It had no problem with this fairly heavy piece of clothing.

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iSight Tripod Adapters

September 9, 2005


Click for huuuuge…

Yeah, production work sucks, but once things are done it’s pretty damn gratifying.

Well, I’m not completely done, but I have finished assembly of all fourty iSight Tripod Adapters. Yep, that’s what’s in the picture above… All fourty, plus the original one I made for the writeup / Make article / prototype / my use / whatever.

Tomorrow (or whenever) I have to figure out the best method for packaging them. I picked up forty zip-top plastic bags today, and I think that bundled up they will fit nicely in the US Postal Service’s smallest Priority Mail box of which I ordered 50 (they are delivered free!) pieces, along with 50 labels and 50 delivery confirmation tags.

Also, before packaging them, I need to photograph one of them and write some text which will hopefully entice people to buy them. They all also need a quick wipe-down with isopropyl alcohol in order to remove fingerprints, any dirt that may have gotten on them, and any wee threads of glue.

Oh, and they also all need to be tested. :\ That’ll be a bit of a chore.

Anyway, they are done. And I am sleepy. There is another photo of the stack of finished adapters here if you’d like to see that one as well. < shrug >

Blah. Yeah, I’m sleepy. And a bit lonely feeling. And the dishes in the kitchen are kinda stinky, but I’m too lazy to do them tonight. Goodnight for now.

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Food and such…

September 8, 2005

So, yeah. Me again. Guess what? A post full of photos… Imaagine that…

First, the thai food pictured above. After being inspired by the people over in #llamasoft I decided to get some thai food for dinner and take pictures of it. It is a quite tasty and very spicy Gang Dang from Bangkok Cuisine Express over on Garfield in Clinton Township, MI. If you’d like to see the photos, either click here for the whole album, or on the following highlight photos:

· See how much food one gets?
· A tasty Bell’s Third Coast Old Ale accompanied the meal.
· There it is, all the food I ate tonight.
· There is always a lot of food left over. Enough for two meals, in fact.

After eating dinner I started working on the iSight Tripod Adapter project some more. I sat at my workbench for a bit, filled some more of the adapter bodies with hot melt, and set aside the finished ones. There are still quite a few more to finish, though.

Oh, one last interesting shot. It seems that I somehow left the cap to my PVC cement opened slightly and it dried out. Well, I decided to pull the applicator out, and what came out with it? All the dried cement from the bottom of the can, with a wonderful POP as the air rushed past the glue and allowed the bottom of the can to return to shape. There’s a shot of the nifty dried glue here.

So, yeah. That’s it for now.

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Hot Melt Glue Sticks

September 6, 2005

It appears that, at least at Michael’s, hot melt glue sticks are no cheaper whether you buy the large or small ones, short or long. The only way to save is to buy a larger quantity. And as the larger guns work in a 40w gun (as opposed to a 10w), it’s likely that the larger sticks will melt faster.

Yes, I did stand in Michael’s with a calculator (in my phone) and calculate the volume of each type of glue stick, then the total volume per bag, in order to come to this conclusion.

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Yay, Acetone!

August 26, 2005


Click for huuuuuge!

There are few things as gratifying as seeing a project starting to come together. In that picture above are two boxes containing two of the three major components which I had to fabricate for the iSight Tripod Adapters. The top containing 40 cut, cleaned, slotted, and prepped body tubes, and the bottom containing the 40 bottom end caps, drilled and fitted with 1/4-20 tee nuts for connecting to a camera tripod.

Please note that the slightly rough slots in the body tubes are okay. The only part which shows in the end is the top of the rounded hole at the end, so those are consistent and nice and smooth. For the rest of the cut I just made certain that it wouldn’t pinch the cable during assembly.

The third part which I have to make is the other end caps, which need to have a precise rectangular hole cut in them in order to accept the moulded vinyl end of the Firewire cables.

After that, I’ll just have to assemble everything, package the adapters, and they’ll be ready to sell! As of right now I’m thinking of US$29.95/ea, shipped to any US destination.

Oh, and did I mention that the only thing I can smell right now is acetone? It seems that acetone not only removes the blue lettering from PVC pipe, it also dissolves the surface slightly, removing any small scuff marks and generally cleaning the pipe. This allows me to make the bodies a pure dull white while leaving the endcaps a nice shiny pure white. I think the contrast, combined with the black Firewire cables, will look pretty nice.

It would have been nice to have white or grey cables, but for a small run I can’t be too picky.

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Icky Hands

August 23, 2005

Well, I finally got started on the actual production of the iSight Tripod Adapters. That is my hand after removing the labels and adhesive from about 30 of the 85 PVC end caps. At this point I had to run to Meijer and grab some more 99% isopropyl. Once I had three bottles here I was able to do a soaking tank type production line, so it went a lot faster.

Tomorrow I drill holes in 40 of them. Five holes per, in fact. Heh.

I think I deserve to stop for the night. My hand-based digits are kinda swollen and sore right now. (I would have worn latex gloves, but I wanted to be able to feel the surface of the PVC to ensure that it was smooth and free of gunk.)

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Peektures…

August 23, 2005

· The 40 IEEE1394a cables came today, so now I can begin making the iSight Tripod Adapters.
· Cost Plus is a great place to buy good beer for cheap. Their selection swings around, but they always tend to have something that is good. The Arcadia Whitsun was $7.49 for a six pack, and the Bell’s Third Coast Old Ale is underpriced at $8.49.
· Yay! The metadata service in OS X crashed while I was doing the massive sync from nuxx.net. I’m not so sure Tiger can deal with massive influxes of info.

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Learning…

August 15, 2005

Tonight’s shiny happy lesson?

Denatured alcohol is not the same as isopropyl alcohol.

This because readily apparent when the $6 can of denatured alcohol that I just purchased failed to remove the label adhesive from some PVC pipe, yet the isopropyl did the job in seconds.

Doh.

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