This guy stripped his GoPros to bare minimum to mount them on his rocket

GoPros and action cameras are small. We all know that. It’s their single biggest advantage over larger and more capable equipment. But sometimes, they’re still not quite small enough. And they’re not exactly aerodynamic, are they? So, what’s the alternative if you want to strap one to a rocket?

Well, if you’re Joe Barnard from BPS.space and you want to shove one on the side of a rocket, there isn’t one. You just have to get a little creative with it. And by creative, I mean attack your GoPro with power tools. Which is what Joe did with his GoPro Hero 10 Bones for his latest rocket project.

Special considerations for flight

When you’re attaching a camera to the side of a rocket, especially a relatively small (or even large) hobby rocket, weight matters. Putting a full sized GoPro on the side of a model rocket would be like attaching a bus to the side of a real one.

In either scenario, the centre of gravity is thrown off. There’s also a lot of wind resistance against the side of the camera – or the bus – throwing things even further out of whack. But Joe needs his 4K 120fps footage, which his GoPro

There are already small, purpose-built cameras designed for things like model aircraft and rockets. The problem is, the image quality on most of them isn’t very good at all. And none of them really shoot 4K 120fps. Well, there is DJI, but that has a whole different set of issues.

Forget the rest

If you want the best, you’re going to have to attack it with your Dremel. What I find almost as interesting as Joe’s modifications to the camera is the fact that there are non-standard replacement cables out there. Is there that big a market for GoPro hacking?

And is it really worth putting all the hassle and effort into modifying a GoPro this much? Well, it sees there must be, because Joe’s deconstructed and installed three of them on his latest rocket. When it launches, it’s intended to touch space and fly at a speed of Mach 3.

The work involved in just figuring out how to do this without killing the cameras is pretty mind boggling. If you want to watch Joe modifying all three of his GoPro Hero 10 Bones cameras, don’t worry, he live streamed it.

It’s not the first time we’ve seen someone strip down a GoPro for aerial footage. And it almost certainly won’t be the last. But mounting them inside rockets is definitely a unique use case.

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