Building a 3rd Person Camera for the MAKE London Fashion Show

For the MAKE London Made Clothing and Wearable Technology Fashion Show I am making a 3rd person camera rig. The 3rd person camera is a project that attempts to replicate the experience of a 3rd person video game (a type game in which the player sees his or her avatar from a camera floating behind the avatar) using a camera, a home-made rig, and a video display. While I’ve seen a number of different designs for making a 3rd person camera (Instructables and Tested have good walk throughs), but I have a few ideas for making an original design.

Three items are needed to create a 3rd person camera:

1. A camera – the camera is used to take video of the person wearing the 3rd person camera, taking the place of the wearer’s eyes.

2. A rig – the rig is used to mount the camera behind the wearer. The rig is usually worn by the wearer attached to some form of clothing.

3. A video display – the video display shows the wearer the live camera feed, blocking out the wearer’s vision so that the wearer can only see the world from the 3rd person.

While most designs for 3rd person cameras use expensive head-mounted displays, my design uses materials that most people will have at home, hopefully making creating a 3rd person camera more accessible. My design will use an Android tablet, a webcam, a cardboard box, and some PCV irrigation piping.

Instead of using an expensive head-mounted display I intend to use my Asus MemoPad HD 7 tablet. This tablet retails for around $120 (compared to $300 for an inexpensive head-mounted display). Using this walkthrough I am able to connect a USB webcam to my tablet without having to root its software. This allows me to use my tablet as a reasonably high-resolution display without having to spend money on a dedicated head-mounted display.

I will then use a USB extending cable to connect an HD webcam to my tablet. I will then use PVC pipes and joiners to create a wearable rig that both mounts the webcam in the proper position and attaches to the wearer of the 3rd person camera.

It is important that the wearer has his or her vision restricted so that he or she can only see the tablet’s display. The goal of the 3rd person camera is to change how the wearer views the world, being forced to rely upon the camera’s view of the wearer. To achieve this goal I will mount the tablet inside of a cardboard box that the wearer will wear on his or her head, blocking all other visual data from the wearer.

To gain a better idea of how my 3rd camera rig will look, have a look at the concept design I’ve included at the bottom of this post. I’d welcome suggestions for improvements.

 

-Ryan Hunt

@Ryan__Hunt