3D Printing Dual Camera Mount for Pairing Z12's

MrSurly said:
Given that I have only a small house but deploy now 21 cameras.... this really IS a sickness, you know.
Click to expand...
"One man's sickness is another man's hobby."

That comes from my old signal processing days when I would teach noise reduction techniques. You needed to analyze the noise train. Students would say they were only interested in the signal. So I would open the lecture with a slide that stated "One man's noise is another man's signal"
 
  • Like
Reactions: mat200, JDreaming, bigredfish and 1 other person
Given that the aluminum PFA137 is $14 on Amazon, I probably would opt for the aluminum, rather than printing one.
The biggest advantage of printing is being able to make mounts that are not normally available.

EDIT: Oh wait. I see from your thread that you are making an angled base.
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: mat200
guykuo said:
Given that the aluminum PFA137 is $14 on Amazon, I probably would opt for the aluminum, rather than printing one.
The biggest advantage of printing is being able to make mounts that are not normally available.

EDIT: Oh wait. I see from your thread that you are making an angled base.
Click to expand...
Also..... he’s in Cuba. I’m very curious about CanCuba’s general marketplace access. @CanCuba do you buy from Amazon etc? I sort of assume you can get everything , just via Belize/Mexico etc
Oh wait... is the embargo still a thing, even?
 
  • Like
Reactions: mat200, CanCuba and 97JeepXJ
MrSurly said:
Also..... he’s in Cuba. I’m very curious about CanCuba’s general marketplace access. @CanCuba do you buy from Amazon etc? I sort of assume you can get everything , just via Belize/Mexico etc
Oh wait... is the embargo still a thing, even?
Click to expand...

The embargo is very much still a thing. It mainly affects banking but being a Canadian, I'm able to transfer money from Canada to my accounts here without issue.

As for buying stuff, it's a bit more complicated. Crowley Cuba Express operates out of Miami with four sailings a week to the terminal container in Mariel, about 45 minutes outside of Havana. They will forward goods from Amazon, etc for a bargain price of $2/pound. But it can be a bit slow to get the stuff I've heard. Never used it myself.

Out of Toronto, where I'm originally from, there's an air freight service which also does forwarding for Amazon, etc. More expensive at about $3/pound (all prices in USD) and faster than Crowley's sea freight service. But still a couple weeks to get it in my hands.

But I mainly have people mule stuff down for me. I have friends from Canada that come down every 3 months and they've been very generous with letting me ship stuff to their place and they bring it down. I had a friend from Texas bring my 3 cams this past week. Customs found them and I ended up paying $30 USD in duty for the three which was nothing.

@guykuo I agree the aluminum is better but the ABS can be in my hands in a couple days. The mounts are for two 5449 dual-lens turrets that my friend brought down. We can't wait to get them mounted so fast service is ideal.

Headed to Mexico in March, so I can pick up some original pieces while I'm there. May just keep the ABS units up to see how they fare in the sun and heat here. If they do okay, I'll save the aluminum ones for future installations.

Wife and I are planning on a perimeter security business which would include IP cams. So if the ABS units are of acceptable quality, it may be an option going forward.
 
  • Like
Reactions: mat200, JDreaming, looney2ns and 5 others
CanCuba said:
The embargo is very much still a thing. It mainly affects banking but being a Canadian, I'm able to transfer money from Canada to my accounts here without issue.

As for buying stuff, it's a bit more complicated. Crowley Cuba Express operates out of Miami with four sailings a week to the terminal container in Mariel, about 45 minutes outside of Havana. They will forward goods from Amazon, etc for a bargain price of $2/pound. But it can be a bit slow to get the stuff I've heard. Never used it myself.

Out of Toronto, where I'm originally from, there's an air freight service which also does forwarding for Amazon, etc. More expensive at about $3/pound (all prices in USD) and faster than Crowley's sea freight service. But still a couple weeks to get it in my hands.

But I mainly have people mule stuff down for me. I have friends from Canada that come down every 3 months and they've been very generous with letting me ship stuff to their place and they bring it down. I had a friend from Texas bring my 3 cams this past week. Customs found them and I ended up paying $30 USD in duty for the three which was nothing.

@guykuo I agree the aluminum is better but the ABS can be in my hands in a couple days. The mounts are for two 5449 dual-lens turrets that my friend brought down. We can't wait to get them mounted so fast service is ideal.

Headed to Mexico in March, so I can pick up some original pieces while I'm there. May just keep the ABS units up to see how they fare in the sun and heat here. If they do okay, I'll save the aluminum ones for future installations.

Wife and I are planning on a perimeter security business which would include IP cams. So if the ABS units are of acceptable quality, it may be an option going forward.
Click to expand...
Thanks a ton for this! I find myself inexplicably curious about Cuba or more specifically 'Life in Cuba' because the Embargo or versions of it have been in place since I was one year old. So, over the years, it has been a mystery-land. The few pictures that we typically see tend to paint what I'm certain is a very skewed picture of only the impoverished, crowded scenes replete with the obligatory '50s and '40s Chevys and pedicabs. I FEEL like there are likely Modern cars all over, Toyotas, Hyundais etc as well as some less desperate-looking neighborhoods, but we only see what we're shown. I probably just need to actively LOOK harder and the internet no doubt has much more to tell me about the place.
Is Cuba really the dystopian Orwell-land that I'm told? Obviously, there is internet connectivity; is it freely accessible or restricted?
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: Broachoski, mat200, JDreaming and 2 others
MrSurly said:
Thanks a ton for this! I find myself inexplicably curious about Cuba or more specifically 'Life in Cuba' because the Embargo or versions of it have been in place since I was one year old. So, over the years, it has been a mystery-land. The few pictures that we typically see tend to paint what I'm certain is a very skewed picture of only the impoverished, crowded scenes replete with the obligatory '50s and '40s Chevys and pedicabs. I FEEL like there are likely Modern cars all over, Toyotas, Hyundais etc as well as some less desperate-looking neighborhoods, but we only see what we're shown. I probably just need to actively LOOK harder and the internet no doubt has much more to tell me about the place.
Is Cuba really the dystopian Orwell-land that I'm told? Obviously, there is internet connectivity; is it freely accessible or restricted?
Click to expand...

Oh, man. This is a topic which turns into a rabbit hole very, VERY quickly! lol

I'm a Canadian who's been living here from six years as a permanent resident. This allows me to own property in my own name, be self-employed (I own and operate an Airbnb from our home) and even open one of the new private corporations which was legalized just two years ago. Just for background.

I'm connected through a grey-market internet connection done with a Ubiquity Nano. $30 USD a month for 24/7 connection (minus downtime for issues) at a rate of 750kb/s. When that connection craps out, the router goes to the 4G/LTE network and then back to the nano when it comes back online. So connectivity isn't an issue unless one is transferring large files often. But the 4G network peaks at about 6MB/s after midnight so even that's possible.

Tonnes of old cars (see my thread here). Lots of new cars and at least one Tesla has been privately imported. Hyundais are popular as they make up a big part of the rental fleet so parts are readily available. And, yes, bicitaxis/pedicabs.

Very nice, well-maintained areas and some extremely marginal areas I won't go into unless it's with someone who lives there and people know who they area. Just like anywhere in the world.

If you're interested, contact me via PM and I can shoot you the links for the AirBNB. Colonial home with modern bathrooms, free wifi, smart TVS, etc. Comforts of home with colonial details such as mosaic tile floors.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Broachoski, mat200, JDreaming and 2 others
PM on the WAY!

I have been to GTMO.... but this does nothing as there's NO connection to the local area or economy. You are on the same island.... but not in the same world, there.
 
  • Love
Reactions: CanCuba
I was trying to rearrange and tidy-up the horror that is my switch closet and one difficulty has been how to arrange and mount the four power supply bricks for the switches.
IMG_0094.jpeg The biggest trouble was figuring out a way to mount the rear-wired switches so that the front AND back of them would be accessible.
The first part was solved amazingly by 3D printing... an existing file found on Thangs.com. A search there for TPLink found this and it's perfect, so I printed four of them.
Note to self: I did them in PLA but it's brittle. Future prints of things that need to flex: PETG is the plan or maybe TPU to REALLY flex.
With that part fixed, I was able to make a little swinging shelf to hold the switches; I can 'park' it and see the lights, or swing it around to access the mess o' cables.

Next steps: Zip ties, new labels and, some paint!

IMG_0105.jpeg
IMG_0104.jpeg
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: Broachoski, mat200, JDreaming and 3 others
Added a support to take any sag out when parked. I was going to 3D something but realized that sometimes simple old analog steel is really best-suited for certain jobs, especially if you need flat/thin/strong and quick.
Some fresh paint for the whole closet will make it more presentable.

IMG_0150.jpeg


IMG_0143.jpeg
 

Attachments

  • IMG_0150.jpeg
    IMG_0150.jpeg
    1.7 MB · Views: 1
  • IMG_0143.jpeg
    IMG_0143.jpeg
    1 MB · Views: 1
  • Like
Reactions: Broachoski, jrbeddow, mat200 and 5 others
Newly printed dual turret mount in place atop its new home. I only had one each of black and one white bodied Loryta IPC-T54IR-ZE(B) on hand. So one camera is white.
Still waiting for paint to dry on some aluminum brims. Once those are dry, I'll add the brims to protect the turrets from raindrops.

dual turret.jpg

Within an hour, one of the new cameras caught a double rainbow.
View attachment Double Rainbow.mp4
 
  • Like
  • Love
Reactions: mat200, bigredfish, JDreaming and 9 others
MrSurly said:
Thanks a ton for this! I find myself inexplicably curious about Cuba or more specifically 'Life in Cuba' because the Embargo or versions of it have been in place since I was one year old. So, over the years, it has been a mystery-land. The few pictures that we typically see tend to paint what I'm certain is a very skewed picture of only the impoverished, crowded scenes replete with the obligatory '50s and '40s Chevys and pedicabs. I FEEL like there are likely Modern cars all over, Toyotas, Hyundais etc as well as some less desperate-looking neighborhoods, but we only see what we're shown. I probably just need to actively LOOK harder and the internet no doubt has much more to tell me about the place.
Is Cuba really the dystopian Orwell-land that I'm told? Obviously, there is internet connectivity; is it freely accessible or restricted?
Click to expand...

Hi @MrSurly

Tourism section is doing well in Cuba .. however, as it is still a Socialist run country there are some serious issues for many Cubans there ..

This video impressed upon me how lucky we are in the USA and other well to do nations which have good market economies.

Cuban Goes to American Supermarket for the 1st time- Communism to Capitalism
 
  • Like
Reactions: CanCuba, MrSurly and Broachoski
mat200 said:
Hi @MrSurly

Tourism section is doing well in Cuba .. however, as it is still a Socialist run country there are some serious issues for many Cubans there ..

This video impressed upon me how lucky we are in the USA and other well to do nations which have good market economies.

Cuban Goes to American Supermarket for the 1st time- Communism to Capitalism
Click to expand...


I married my first wife in 2007 and she arrived in Canada in 2008. Same thing. Blown away. 10 different types of cooking oil!? WHY!? Which isn't an invalid question.

Cuba has a lot of private markets now which are supplied by the new private corporations importing goods. I can buy 20 different kinds of beer within a 3 block radius. I mean, it would be nice to have different cheese but I'm thirsty more often than hungry! lol

My current wife is in Spain right now. She travelled to Argentina for work a couple years ago but didn't get to go out much as there was a lot of training. This trip to Spain, she has more time as she's visiting her cousin who lives there. She's very impressed but misses her parents and grandmothers.

The world is an amazing place with billions of different experiences for the over 8 billion people in this world of ours.
 
  • Like
Reactions: JDreaming, MrSurly and mat200
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top Bottom