RPi-CameraMount

Raspberry Pi Camera Mount

I had a camera attached to a gooseneck mount to take time lapse videos of the bed of my 3d printer while printing (via the fantastic Octoprint running on the RPi in the picture), but it kept getting in the way, so I searched for a better solution.

There are quite a few camera mounts that will attach to some screw or other fixture right on the different printer models, but none really fit the way I wanted. So I decided to roll my own.

The basic idea behind this camera mount is to use one (or more) of the USB ports of the Raspberry Pi as an anchor and then to attach one (or more) segments to that base and to top it off with a ball bearing mount for the camera proper.

The parts are glued onto each other thus avoiding the need for supports during printing (except for CameraMountUSB2 which cannot be printed without).

The simple version just provides a flat surface to mount the camera on, but I decided to use a Pi-Noir camera and to throw in some IR illumination (https://learn.pi-supply.com/make/bright-pi-quickstart-faq) and used xrxca's "bright pi camera case" (https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4585921) to house the camera and the lighting.

Unfortunately xrxca's license does not allow derivative work - I essentially replaced the hinge in his design with the ball housing of CameraMountSimple - to be re-published, so I had to omit the modified .STL files. Sorry.

The camera mount shown uses CameraMount.stl (slightly modified version of CameraMountUSB1.stl to adjust for the slightly lower ribs of this specific heat sink) as the base. On top of that I glued a CameraMountFoot, a CameraMountMast and a CameraMountBearing to reach the height limit given by the ribbon connector supplied with the Pi-Camera.

The whole assembly plugs into one of the top USB ports on the RPi and rests its weight on the minimal housing.

My model was also published by me as https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4695918 under the same license.