After yesterday’s fail­ure I brought a bit of extra duct tape and super glue and got the car back in work­ing order with the cam­era affixed to it nicely. I took it out again this after­noon to see if I could get the cam­era to sur­vive some small jumps off some staircases.

The good news is my duct tap­ing and super glu­ing worked. The cam­era didn’t move an iota — though sadly I had to tilt it a bit to the left to get it seated prop­erly — and the servo con­trol­ler stayed where it was sup­posed to.

Before I get into the down­sides maybe I’ll just show the video.

So the first down­side is that the video ends about five minutes earlier than it should have. When I rolled the car it rolled onto the shut­ter but­ton, unbe­knownst to me. It’s too bad since the crazier/​more abus­ive stuff came after that.

The second down­side is that both the cam­era and car took more abuse than they have before. The metal cas­ing on the cam­era got scraped off on one corner. One of the front shocks on the car came apart, which is espe­cially bad con­sid­er­ing it’s an oil-​​filled shock absorber. I haven’t decided what I’ll do about that.

The third down­side is that since I had to run the car without a body in order to get the cam­era on, it got more water dam­age than usual. Cur­rently it only goes in reverse. I’ll take another look at it after it dries out.

I think I’m going to put this short-​​lived remote con­trolled car video­graphy pro­ject aside until I fig­ure out a way to get things to sur­vive better.

After yesterday's failure I brought a bit of extra duct tape and super glue and got the car back in working order with the camera affixed to it nicely. I took it out again this afternoon to see if I could get the camera to survive some small jumps off some staircases. The good news ...

The last time I attached a cam­era to my remote con­trolled car the major prob­lem, from my per­spect­ive, was that it was too bumpy, to the point of not being able to see any­thing, really. The solu­tion to this is two-​​fold:

1. Do it on pave­ment instead of snow.
2. Attach the cam­era more securely.

Since it’s been crazy nice lately — 4º for the past couple days — we’ve had a lot of dry pave­ment com­ing out, so I took the camera/​car com­bin­a­tion out again today. I attached the cam­era dir­ectly to the chassis with the help of a styro­foam shim, rather than to the body like I did last time.

It star­ted off prom­ising! Up until the last ten seconds I think it counts as a mod­est suc­cess! There’s not so much boun­cing and you can actu­ally see what’s going on.

Sadly, those last ten seconds…yeah, I turned left when I should have turned right. It not only knocked the cam­era off, but it knocked the con­trol­ler off the chassis. The design of the car is rather stu­pid in this regard: the con­trol­ler is just can­ti­levered, held in by adhes­ive, in my case super glue. I’ll re – super glue it and see if I can’t try again tomorrow.

My ulti­mate plan was to take it off some sweet jumps. Now I’m won­der­ing if the cam­era will sur­vive the trip: it was just held in place by the afore­men­tioned styro­foam shim and some duct tape. I’ll try it with more duct tape and see if I can’t get it to sur­vive a jump tomorrow.

The last time I attached a camera to my remote controlled car the major problem, from my perspective, was that it was too bumpy, to the point of not being able to see anything, really. The solution to this is two-fold:Do it on pavement instead of snow.Attach the camera more securely.Since it's been crazy ...

I’ve always loved remote con­trolled cars. I think at one point in ele­ment­ary school I even lis­ted R/​C car driver as a future pro­fes­sion of mine. While I did have some actu­ally really nice cars as a kid, one dream of mine which never came to fruition was to put a video cam­era on the car. It would be like being trans­por­ted to a mini­ature world where everything is huge and cars go orders of mag­nitude faster than they should.

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I've always loved remote controlled cars. I think at one point in elementary school I even listed R/C car driver as a future profession of mine. While I did have some actually really nice cars as a kid, one dream of mine which never came to fruition was to put a video camera on ...