Mobile Camera Rig: Plans and Materials

You have 2 HDMI and 2 USB inputs and full control to layer and arrange them, rotate, size, crop, etc. Overlays right now are images, video, hoping they’ll add web overlays but that’s not in there yet. You can have multiple scenes to switch between and it streams out to YT, Twitch, RTMP, NDI, SRT. Also has a web interface, phone app, and full API. I’ve been experimenting with it since December and it has a lot of promise in a small device.

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@spraynard @kdeangelo

The BOM that Phil originally posted from 8020 - did any of the beams need any specialized machining services? Where there any written out assembly instructions posted (it’s a rather long threat to try and look through)?

When Karl switched out the 1515’s for 1530’s, did anything need to be changed in terms of the BOM as Phil had posted it other than just switching out the beam type?

Thanks for any clarification you can provide.

Patrick

My design does not require any counterbores. Karl’s does. Both designs function fine but Karl’s looks a lot cleaner because the butt joint connections are hidden. The only advantage of mine is that it may take less time to ship. Might be a little cheaper? I’m not sure. If I were ordering a new rig now I would go with Karl’s version.

No you cannot simply swap in 1530 for my design.

Someone posted an assembly video earlier in the thread. But honestly it’s not that hard to intuit how it goes together.

Is there a bill of materials and instructions posted for Karl’s design? I didn’t see one scanning through the thread. Thanks!

Yes he posted one in this thread

Perhaps of interest to the group, I recently picked up an Insta360 X5 camera and had the realization today that it might work as a one-camera minimal setup for recording gameplay on location. After all, it records everything it sees so if placed correctly it could record the playfield, player, and score all at the same time. Can’t stream in realtime with all of those views setup like we’re used to seeing, but with some quick edits in a video editor you can put together a pretty convincing video for a rig that’s nothing more than a small camera on a mic stand. Here’s what that looks like to play in front of:


and here is the resulting video that can be created from that one-camera recording with a bit of editing:

Now I just need to figure out a better stand that doesn’t stick out to the right so far since the weight of the camera is negligible, I could probably hacksaw the end of the boom arm off but there may be better pre-built structures to support this and work well fitting between games. But ultimately the whole thing is easy to transport and with an external mic setup and a few more small tweaks could give a real quality video when doing remote-based content. Figured I’d share as I hadn’t seen anyone playing with this idea.

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This is absolutely incredible. I struggled to see a seam on the playfield with the cameras facing you and the backboard. When you rotate it, your face looks fine, the distortion of the windows behind you doesn’t matter.

I don’t think anything will top this as a mobile set up for a long time until this can stream to HDMI and be processed in realtime for Twitch.

I keep trying to figure out a better mobile rig to travel with, but the reality is anything else requires multiple cameras, batteries, and a computer for streaming. I think I’m gonna buy one of these just from your example video!

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It seems like it can send a live feed to OBS. Is the limitation getting OBS to flatten it out and crop it for the three views?

https://onlinemanual.insta360.com/x5/en-us/camera/appuse/obs

I noticed that as well, but yeah I think it’s not as simple as cropping because a 360 video made flat has all kinds of curves to it. The OBS method is really to be able to livestream 360º to YouTube. Now that itself could be pretty cool though. I uploaded a video of gameplay and later watched it on a VR headset and it was really trippy. Even in the YouTube mobile app when you’re watching it you can move your phone around to “look around”. Kind of a fun experiment.