Build an easy DIY overhead camera rig with Open Source Hardware

Whether hardware or software, Open Source is a wonderful thing. Open Source doesn’t always mean free, though, especially when it comes to hardware.

While not necessarily cheap, the DIY solution presented in this video from Bent-Tronics does fall in line with other such overhead camera projects. The simple fact of the matter is that it’s not easy to do something like this ultra cheap unless you happen to have the perfect components just laying around doing nothing already.

If you already know why you need another camera rig, and the problems with existing solutions like tripods, then you can skip ahead to just before 6 minutes into the video and go straight to the build.

Building a rig this way out of a modular system like OpenBeam, means that it’s easily expandable in the future, or can be modified to suit other needs. Adding brackets for lights or an external monitor is only a couple of nuts and bolts away.

• OpenBeam Starter Construction Kit – $49.99
• OpenBeam Kossel Pro Extrusions – $64.99
• Alpen Car Window Mount – $22.95

So, total cost will run you about $140 with these parts, but if you shop around, you can find alternatives for less. With OpenBeam being an open source product, the measurements are freely available for anybody to manufacture their own components if they have access to the suitable equipment to do so.

You can even dispense with the starter construction kit completely if you have your own 3D printer to make your own corner brackets, and M3 screws are the standard used for building PCs, so those are available in plentiful supply very inexpensively.

Using components like this also means that you can take it apart and reuse the pieces for something else when it’s no longer needed.

Do you use an overhead camera rig? Did you go with something like this? Or figure out something yourself from scratch? Let us know in the comments.