www.adrianshanahan.com

Hey all,

With what seems to be the driest winter in memory and if the daily updated Facebook & Twitter status of the Irish boating community are to be believed paddlers are being driven to madness and MTB. I’m no exception to this and if anyone who has seen me on a bike they will testify that I’d be better off going mad than embarrass myself any further while biking.

So with that mass amount of time I have to waste these days I had to have something to help pass the time and slow my descent into madness.

I have started to notice more and more top quality video productions of boater x events and extreme races.

In all of these productions we see the use of cable cams and get massive and cool sweeping and tracking shots of runs down sections of river. Over the years loads of boaters have chatted after a few beers saying “we should so do something like that on the < insert river name here >.

I’m not sure if it was a moment of stupidity or inspiration but the other day I went I might have a go of doing a DIY one of those. I went to the the shed and in 30mins I had come up with a wee bit of a “proof of concept”.

Now I know what I came up with is as rough as a Bear’s rear end but it was enough for me to think it might be worth a bit more effort.

I came up with a bit of a list of features I’d love to have, not saying I could manage them all but sure what harm in thinking about it.

Power driven
Stable (gyros / counterweight)
Pan & Tilt movement
Video sender
Oh and the whole thing has to be radio control

My knowledge of miniature electronic and robotics is limited enough but sure I wasn’t about to let that stop or slow me down at all. Here was my first concept.

The two red areas would represent two 24v motors to drive the unit on the cable while the yellow thing would be a weighted pendulum to counter left/right swing. I wasn’t really able to get pan & tilt to work with this idea so I had to do a bit of re design.

I hit up Google to see if it could help me out a bit and this is my latest rough concept.

I have started to get a few bits like the RC gear and a couple of motors / servos so I can start construction soon as possible. Where I am a little stuck is how to engineer the centre 360deg swivel point, I was considering using a lazy Susan type thing mounted inverted but I know there has to be a better way.

I’ve been on the the folks over on Robots.ie but I know there is a mass of experience out there amound boaters so I would love to hear from folks whom might know more than me or have some ideas or suggestions.

That’s all on this for now but if things start to come together I may post a few updates. Lets all start praying from some rain before the madness sets in any further.

Adrian