VinePro - Camera Head Mount

The jungle is full of vines, you're constantly on the look-out to keep yourself from tangling and stumbling. It is basically impossible to spare a hand to hold a camera and capture footage of your amazing trek through the wilderness. But these same vines that are getting in your way can be re-purposed to aid your way!

The VinePro is a camera head mount for a GoPro made entirely from jungle vines. It took a week of life in the jungle before I made the connection between vine-problem and vine-solution. But once the idea formed, it took less than an hour to realize. This Instructable covers the few steps it takes to find, cut and assemble various jungle vines into the finial design.

This design was made during the Dissemination Lab expedition lead by Brian Fisher. During the expedition Andrew Quitmeyer and I collaborated on building and hacking tech in the wild. If you are interested in the details of this crazy adventure you can read our live field journal on Open Explorer or follow us through #WildHacks on Twitter!

The jungle is an amazing place for making things, I can only recommend going there with some tools, some ideas and lots of time and trail mix.

The following video shows me explaining how the camera rig is made from various vines:

To show how well this design worked for us, here is a video of Andrew walking through our second base-camp and me following him wearing the VinePro:

Improvements:

There is still much room for improving this design and I'd appreciate any ideas you might have. Some improvements I can already think of include:

* make the camera angle adjustable

* made head ring size-adjustable

* easier access to buttons and display on the camera

* access to battery

* more comfortable

- Various sizes of flexible jungle vines

- Good cutting knife for harvesting vines

- GoPro camera (or similar)

- Piece of soft fabric for comfort (optional)

Take a stroll through the jungle and don't forget to bring your knife. Look up and down the trunks of trees, on the ground and for vines hanging in the air, especially up high. It can take some patience, once finding a vine, to unravel it and cut it in order to get a good amount of length. So enjoy the process. No rush. For the head mount I recommend collecting the following types of vines:

* At least one rather sturdy, yet flexible vine. It should be able to bend around the curvature of your head and be long enough to wrap around your head 2 or 3 times.

* Some bamboo vine that is made up of short stiff segments with knotty joints in between. Although other relatively straight vine will also work.

* Thin and really flexible vine. I found some fresh green vine that fulfilled these criteria for me, though you'll also come across dryer looking vine that is equally flexible.

Cut the vines and wrap them into bundles, then look for a comfortable sunny spot to sit for the next hour or so.

First take the sturdier vine and wrap it twice around your head. I had two shorter pieces of sturdy vine, so my design connects these two through the weaving around 4 warps, but you can also wrap the same piece of vine around twice and then have only 3 warps.

warp: - - - - - - - -

weft: | | | | | | | |

Two shorter separate pieces of vine:

1 - - | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | -

2 - | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | - |

3 - - | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | -

4 - | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | - |

One long piece of vine:

1 - - | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | -

2 - | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | - |

3 - - | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | -

This is maybe the trickiest part of the whole process, to hold everything in place in order to weave, before the weaving itself begins to hold things in place. Try to hold the two sturdy vine rings in place while you take the most thin and flexible vine you have to begin weaving these 3 or 4 ends (warps) together. If you have never woven before, examine the photos closely to see how the thin vine (weft) travels in and out, back and forth, up and down between the sturdier vines (warp).

Now that the two sturdy rings are held in place by their ends being woven together, we can take two short pieces of the same sturdy vine (or a thinner vine or twigs would also do) and bind them to the opposite side of the head rings to form a frame that fits the camera perfectly. See photos that show how the frame keeps the distance between the head rings and allows the camera to push through.

Again, use a thin and flexible vine to create the joints of the frame. Start at one corner (intersection of two vines) and begin binding the corners of the frame together by wrapping the thin vine around diagonally from top to bottom (1 --> 2), then from right to left (2 --> 3) and diagonally back to the top (3 --> 4):

1 | | 4

------------------- -------------------

------------------- -------------------

3 | | 2

After fixing one intersection continue to wrap the vine once around the frame to the next corner and repeat the binding process described above. Continue this two more times until all four corners of the frame are fixed. Find a tight loop to poke the end of the vine back through before cutting it, this will keep it from unraveling.

Now the head ring part of your rig is done.

To secure the GoPro in the head ring frame this design mounts some sticks on the back of the camera so that it can fit through the frame from behind without falling out.

Take 4 stiffer pieces of vine that are slightly longer than the width of your camera. Then take the flexible vine (thinner the better) and wrap it around the GoPro and then weave it through the pieces on the back. Repeat this over and over again until you feel your camera and the vine wrapping/weaving are securely fixed together. To end the weaving feed the end of the vine through a tight gap and pull tight. This is also shown in the following video:

Don't forget when wrapping to leave gaps so that you can still access to the two buttons on the GoPro camera. This is definitely one part of the design that could do with improvements in terms of camera button/screen/battery access and comfort.

Both parts of your vine rig are complete. Fit the camera through the head ring frame and try it on. If it is uncomfortable try adding a piece of soft fabric or even some leaves or moss between the rig and your forehead.

Enjoy!