Public Lab Research note


a pendulum rig flies over China

by liz | February 01, 2016 21:40 01 Feb 21:40 | #12642 | #12642

Here are some photos of the pendulum rig we made on January 17th, following along with the comments on @tonyc's note: https://publiclab.org/notes/tonyc/11-30-2015/string-and-paperclip-method-for-attaching-mobius-camera-to-dowel-pendulum-rig#c12983

First assembly, on a train. dowel extension, rubber band. no vinyl yet:

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This is He Shan looking for vinyl, easiest small piece to get was as phone /tablet covers in street market:

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This is Zhang Zhang, the product designer who secured the camera to the dowel and wrapped it in vinyl, now going in search of helium at Spring Festival markets:

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close-up of the assembly:

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Attaching it to balloon line:

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...and the balloons popped (that's a story for another research note), so we quickly velcroed the pendulum rig to a bamboo pole:

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Lion and King starting to fly on kite:

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See how the pendulum rig hangs nicely:

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2 Comments

Very cool to see what they came up with. I see they are using the velcro cable ties on the pole mount. And that they'd cut the zip tie at the end of the dowel to where it was just the fastener there...

I notice they only used one length of dowel, which was something I was worried about from my instructions; I think you'll always get better angle by using the two lengths of dowel (or at least a longer length of dowel). The short drop means less leverage, so the small weight of the camera is not enough to straighten out the natural curve of the PVC tubing. By having the camera hang the full 18" from the line, the angle would be more directly vertical than you see in the bottom photo.

These are so cool! Very exciting to see the ideas in use! Thanks for posting these. I'm excited to hear any feedback on the DIY mini kite kit, or the rigs in general.

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Yes it really worked great! See the first picture in the note, can you see the rig is hanging from a computer, and we had two lengths of dowel to start off with? Because it was hard to find enough helium, we started stripping off extra weight and reduced to one dowel.

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