Car Camera Rig Construction

I'm coming up to the 9 month PhD review so a lot of my time is being spent writing a report for that. Although I spent the weekend writing a C++ class for serial GPS reading, it's a bit of 're-inventing the wheel' as there are libs available but it was actually easier just to write my own. I know it works with my GPS receiver and I'm getting exactly the data I want in the form I want. Nothing works as well as your own code. Once it's a bit more mature and extracting more information I'll pop it online somewhere, in the event someone else finds it's useful.

In the meantime I spent today redesigning the extruded aluminium frame that will hold the camera array and attach to a roof-rack. The items in question were purchased from http://www.valuframe.co.uk/. Just as an aside, one of the bars was a bit misshapen when it arrived, but we did receive an extra 2m of bar and a couple extra connectors...swings & roundabouts.

I initially constructed the frame in a symmetrical manner (see crude sketch). Two bars joined at the end with a 90° bracket and a corner plate (blue) to add rigidity, repeat for all corners. This worked nicely, it was strong and didn't use too many parts.....however it does restrict two channels in the aluminium bar. To access them to add more components would mean taking apart one of the corners, as the keyed inserts have to be slid along from the end.

A redesign was needed...... (this is quite difficult to draw in 2D) but basically any given channel cannot have both ends used. So the bars and mounts have to alternate which side they connected to.

 Voila! Not very exciting... but I think it's a neat solution. Every channel is accessible from from at least 1 end, therefore components can be added to any free portions of the bars.