How to Build Your Own $18,000 Robotic 360° Camera Rig for $650
In one of the most daring (and cost saving) feats of do it yourself engineering we’ve ever seen, the folks at YouTube channel Indy Mogul managed to recreate a remote-controlled 360° camera rig that normally costs $18,000 for just $650!
Indy Mogul’s Erik Beck walks you through the whole process in the video up top. Basically, he took a motorized wheelchair he found next to a dumpster (you can find them online for about $120) and hacked together a remote-controlled camera rig for his 360° camera using the wheelchair as the base. It’s ingenious.
A similar professional rig, ready made, costs about $18,000. It only cost Erik $245 because of the parts he had lying around, but even if you have to buy everything and build it from scratch you could still do it for about $650. And it works like a charm! Check out this test footage, a 360° tour of the Indy Mogul shop:
The reason they embarked on this project was simple: shooting 360° video without a remote-controlled rig means the person controlling the camera is always in the shot. Using a remote-controlled rig lets you hide and keep the shot clear.
When they found out that a comparable ready-made rig would cost them 18 grand, the decision to go DIY was easy.
This obviously isn’t a project for the faint of DIY heart, but if you’ve got the welding skills, an adequate shop to work with, and the need for a remote-controlled 360° camera rig, let this video serve as both proof-of-concept and inspiration.
(via Forbes)
