Build a Tiny Camera Car for your Model Railroad - Professional Tools for Modellers
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- Опубліковано 25 вер 2024
- I’ve always wanted to see what my model railroad would look like from the perspective of a tiny HO scale person walking around… And now I can 😄
In this tutorial I use a number of specialized tools to get the final result, however as long as you have some wheels and some materials you could make a basic version of this by hand if desired, you could even just adapt the camera to an existing piece of rolling stock on your layout and get some really cool shots!
If you’re interested in building this exact model you’ll find the files for the camera mount for free on my website here:
If you want to build the flatbed cars as well they are available for purchase through my store here:
Or if you’re a $7 Patreon, you can get access to the store as part of the Patreon membership so you’ll not only be able to download these cars but also a selection of the other items in the store as well.
Thanks to all the experts in the comments reminding me that lead isn't magnetic, where would I be without you 🙄
What you didn't realise is that I also have a really cold room and when lead gets down close to absolute zero it becomes a superconductor and you will be able to measure a magnetic field, thus my tiny magnetic screw driver attracts lead 😉
Lol. Yeah, I'm pretty sure Liquid Gravity is just tungsten steel balls.
I've started using tungsten putty instead (used for fishing). You get more weight in the same volume and you don't need to flood it with glue.
absolute zero = -273.15 centigrade
So there! Don't make him send out his trunk monkey, you won't like the lead it uses.🐒
@@alanswallow9033 I have a really good air conditioner 😉 Plus I wear a really good long sleeve t-shirt so the cold doesn't effect me!
@@BoulderCreekRailroad I can loan you my former mother-in-law, she will bring the room temperature down to sub-zero in no time!
In Tinkercad, you could create a shell that slides over the camera to make it look like something else. Perhaps a water barrel strapped to the car, or part of a tractor, or various other things. Would look better than the modern, white camera from the outside perspective.
Really fantastic idea
I agree. Maybe something that can house the camera horizontally with the lense facing upward and use a rotating adjustable mirror component above the lense to capture normal footage.
@@GM-qq1wi I have already tried using a mirror, the problem is ghosting in the reflected image and also the wide angle of the lens means the mirror has to be huge! Much larger than the car it's sitting on which defeats the purpose of using a small camera in the first place.
The glue works really well on paper, but what about for real?
Lol… it took me a second to figure out the joke!
Nice one :)
This really turned out awesome! It’s crazy how big that super tiny camera looks in the train 🤯
You always take things to the next level with detail, options, and creativity - this really is the best channel for serious HO modelers.
I wish the technology had been available back in the day to run a tiny camera around by dad's huge HO layout. On a pensioner's budget, before 3D printers, though not quite to the same level of realism as you, dad built all of the scenery himself. It took a while to convince him to move into model railroading after he retired but once he started he was hooked. These were the days before computer controlled layouts just simple toggle switches and speed controls on the layout's control panel.
Right? I feel the same about my Hot Wheels tracks. It's so cool that technology has caught up to our childhood dreams to get a 1st person perspective of these layouts. And in high quality as well!
That's impressive Luke.
A bit high tech maybe for some of us.
I use a Tri-ang metal crane wagon base with a drone camera held on by a rubber band. 😅
Stay safe and happy modelling
Mon
Over 60 and I loved doing models and trains, AFX race track. As a kid I always imagined what my tracks and buildings looked like. Just getting back into my old hobbies and cannot believe what I can do. New subscriber
So cool, I love when you get to see things from this perspective it gives you a chance to see the finer details.
Hey Luke! Quick tip I learned from UA-camr Pocket83 : warming the epoxy slightly using a hairdryer for example, will massively improve fluidity, and make it easier to clean up when still liquid 😊 might be useful when glueing liquid gravity and the like.
What a great idea!
Love your videos dude
I use my go 3 to film most of my videos now as well as my insta 360 RS one. Like the fact you do not need to pre frame the shot and can do that in post.
Long time fan of your dioramas, but only recently became interested in railroads. Whole new level of enjoyment in your videos Luke!
Good idea and execution of the idea as well. You can get smaller cameras, but often image quality is not as good. I don't think that 'Liquid Gravity' is made from lead, as it is not magnetic. It is probably a steel product which is magnetic. Good post, thank you 👍
6:55 are you sure that's lead and not just iron/steel?
Not that important of course as long as it's enough ballast in the available volume
Well, since lead isn't magnetic it must be something else. Plus, if you google liquid gravity the bottle clearly states non-toxic...which we know isn't lead.
I love watching your videos, oddly relaxing and love seeing the work you put into. That, and the fact that you share your insights and knowledge for those of us interested in learning how to do this. Thanks for all you do!
Och, I like your spring to hold the brushes. Simple and effective. Thanks for the idea.
Your work is so inspiring and full of humility. I wish I could find work with people who see the value in a job well done and always looking for ways to improve and learn. Love these videos!
At the GVMRC we had an sd40 (?) modified to have a camera that pokes out of the cab. It had a transmitter and it sent it’s fuzzy footage to the tv. The club has had it for many years and works surprisingly ok for shows
Not much I can say Sir. You have done it once again. Thanks for your enthusiastic post showing excellent work and ease of build.
This is awesome, thanks for this! I have also shot POV on model railway layouts as well, although I’ve used a DJI Pocket 2, which conveniently fits on a OO/HO Scale flat wagon, works a treat! 👍
The main challenge with this camera is trying to get the focus and depth of field right. Your solution with the Insta 360 GO looks a much easier solution! 😅
I will never built a diorama but I'll always watch you do it. I'll never built a railroad and the technical stuff is boring if you don't. 😅
Nice work but I hope for more dioramas as well.
Your work is remarkable. You always show such perfection in your work and it is much appreciated. This is an excellent example. Thank you.
That is a cool camera car, you could also have laid the camera on the flatbed pointing up, hand have had a mirror tilted at ~45° above it, to minimise height.
I've watched this video a couple of times. The first time I watched it, I went back to the video you did building a HO Remote Control car and wondered if it was possible to put a pin hole camera on a remote control that small. Maybe if it was set up like a Google Earth Camera car. Your videos have inspired me to build a model train set with several features if I ever have the room to build one.
I have used cameras a few times but getting one small enough and good enough has been a problem. This looks like a promising camera. I only want 4k as my other videos are recorded in 4K. I was looking at the latest small Go Pro before I saw this. Good job.
Stunning work, Luke! Beautiful little car!!! 😃
I loved the wood pattern!
Stay safe there with your family! 🖖😊
Luke, great little addition to a model railway. Wonderful model.
Thanks for sharing, Cheers, andf stay safe, Michael
Little cricket from Gen V would LOVE this dude.
Thanks Luke, another timely (for my MR Club) idea. We have been saying we need to mount cameras in front of our trains and have the views diplayed on a screen so visitors can get a a "train driver's view". Mind you that also opens another can of worms for us to deal with! What do you do about decorating inside tunnels?😊 that will keep us out of mischief!
Search for :
amra layout tour lloydhurst to st john
To see how using a depressed centre or well car and a small standard camera can work well in tunnels even ten years ago.
I don't think those pellets are 100% lead. Lead's not ferric, so magnets don't work on it.
SNAP! You beat me to the post I have a video about 2 weeks in queue covering this but from a slightly different approach which for the movement I can’t quite engineer but know there is a solution just around the corner. Great stuff as alway.
You make things easier for us with your ideas. Cheers from Spain.
Awesome video mate! Makes me want to give up cockpit building and get into scenic railway!
Can't wait to see more updates of the moduler railway
Awseome build! Can't wait to see your future projects from this perspective.
The name liquid gravity is so clever
Great. I’ve often thought of that and it becomes more and more feasible as cameras get smaller
Nice video Luke. Great idea for a camera car. I like how you added some extra detail and weathering to it. - Nicholas.
Would be great to see some rear facing shots of the whole train winding its way through the layout!
“I’m no expert when it comes to painting” says the Modelling Michelangelo to the masses 😂 Seriously, Luke, another fantastic build!
You are always so thorough! Very inspiering!
Love your work Luke, loving this build up series you've got going
Another great 'how to' Luke!!! Many thanks for sharing this video! Cheers Onno.
I’m going to make something similar with a Raspberry Pi and a wireless access point. A bloke at work is keen to get his model trains up and running and this would be so cool.
Would have been nice to see more examples of the end shots around the track.
I like when cans of things get flipped
Great idea! Thank you for this video. I love simple things with magnets!
happy thanksgiving
An awesome project, well done sir! A video of your layout from the camera car would be a fun one to watch. Happy Thanksgiving!
Am I alone thinking something like this with pan and tilt would be really cool, I’m guessing pan wouldn’t be too difficult.
Thank you for your great work ! 👏👏👏
Oh wow, that's a great project. I bet the footage on it will look amazing, looking forward to seeing.
I know you normally model in HO/00 gauge... any ideas for N gauge? I'd love something like this I could build for N gauge and run, but not have to redesign all the clearances to do it.
Nice Idea. It is far easier to mount the camera on an existing waggon, how ever I wonder if a bogie waggon would be a far more stable camera wagon than a 4 wheeler?
It would be great to weather the camera and mount so it looks like a piece of machinery being transported. Could even add little magnetic load chains.
I miss seeing more constructions on the canal, missing a Pyramid, ski slopes, bus station, Hotwells track.
The dudes so smart he invented magnetic lead.
If you keep working hard at school you too will be able to use your will to make anything magnetic…
Now take it to the next step . . . GOLD!! 😃@@BoulderCreekRailroad
Luke you never cease to amaze me. Happy Thanksgiving
The camera you have looks quite slim. Could you lay it on its back and hold a mirror over the top at ~45°? You'd have to flip the video in software, but it might give a shorter overall arrangement.
Great work, this is such a fun idea and addition to a miniature. i don't think it would be possible, but i imediadly thought it would be incredible if this could be adapted into an HO scale google streetview car
Great build, could not find the car in your store , looks fantastic
Would be cool to have a screen on the outside of the layout, that has a live feed of what the camera sees (and even a train graphic added over top).
It be really cool if you'd pair up with one of the small companies doing 3d printed cars to produce the parts commercially. I love hand building my cars but I just don't have the time to do the leg work printing and laser cutting parts.
You come up with some pretty cool ideas!
Cool project
I need more builds.
You could have used a mirror or prism to allow the camera to lie on a more flat profile.
I tried that but ran into issues with ghosting 😒 plus the wide angle lens meant the mirror needed to be extra wide and kinda defeated the purpose of using the mirror in the first place…
Super cool idea Luke
I know things are different in Queensland but I didn't realise you guys had magnetic lead up there!
Yeah it’s true, we have magnetic aluminium as well 😉
A great idea.
Im using a chopped up warwell wagon with a polaroid cube. It doesnt sit higher than the train then.
I saw some of those cube cameras, is the picture quality ok? The ones I saw were just the cheap ones on eBay for about $50 which had pretty bad picture. I'm guessing the brand name version is quite good, I'll have to check them out 😉
Congratulations, very cool.
You know if you wanted to go hard-core... Use a Raspberry PI, buy the camera module supplied with a 5cm x 6mm ribbon. With a little bit of work I think you could actually mount it in the cab. Or just go for Optic Fibre to where you want the cam then mount the cam in a box car following.
That would be cool. Could hide the board in its own car pretty easily.
@@RealAndySkibba And the new board has wifi if you need to broadcast to a PC for live record/editing.
This looks great, but is really overkill for what's being done. I accomplished the exact same thing by just taking the top off an old Sant Fe caboose (which has a steel weight in it) and use a DJI Action 2 camera which has a magnetic base. I swapped out one of the stock horn-hook couplers with a Kadee, and now can use it both as a converter car and/or as a camera car with either type of coupler. It took 10 minutes and cost $0.
Can you explain to me why you're not using a conventional fdm-printer for some of your projects? It surely would be a great addition to your workshop and you don’t have to assemble stuff like the camera holder manually. Just print and you’re done. No assembly required.
Doing this in HO is easy, now try this in scale N 😊
Everything is either too wide or too high, ended up using (cannibalising) a pen shaped spy cam.
Still a nice video though👍.
I Was wondering what would work for N-scale, Can you even put a camera on an n-scale train flat car or something different. Thank you.
Wow that is so cool 😎
Really cool
Hi Luke- just watched this. I have been after a good pocket video camera to film my layout. Issue I run into is the depth of field on these action cameras- they don't seem to be for the purpose of filming model railroads. How do you handle this with the camera you are using? Focus cna also be off- or at least very variable. These ae somewhat "action" shots, as the camera will travel around the layout. But it woulld be nice if everythng was in focus for more than a 1-2 inch point somewhewre in the POV! Does this camera have a manual mode where focus and DOF can be set? Great job, BTW!
Hey Rob, thanks for the compliment! I too was having a real hard time finding something with a deep DoF, this camera like most others suffers from very close objects being blurry.
It doesn't have manual focus, it's always focused to infinity.
Mostly everything will be in focus as long as it's further than 3-4 inches from the lens. Anything that gets close to the lens will become blurry. Distant objects should be in focus if they are beyond 3-4 inches away.
I have heard of people using the DJI Pocket however it has a very shallow DoF and most of the view is blurry if you try to focus on anything close.
I've got some images on my website with better quality screen shots from the camera so you might get a better idea of the type of shots you'll get from the camera: www.bouldercreekrailroad.com/youtube-videos/build-a-tiny-camera-car
Hope that helps.
P.S. Love your videos and your amazing layout!
@@BoulderCreekRailroad Thanks Luke! That is kind of what I expected on the DOF. I have been to your website (love it, BTW!) and saw the pictures- I admit they do look good. I am looking at videos on YT on the Insta360 GO3 (and the GO2...) and still thinking it over. Not a cheap date- but could be worth it if it does what we need. Thanks for the kind words- coming from someone as talented as you, it means a lot.🚂
I really enjoy your vids. You not only display, but actually put into use, all the latest technology. One dummy question, though: what is that plate you use for sanding.? It looks like a piece of slate. Thx.
It might be a piece of float glass, which is really flat, with the sandpaper glued to it.
The glass does look fairly thick. Perhaps a piece of tempered window glass?
Good idea...!!!
I would love a video on the x-ray process
Very well done! A little too much work for me. I use a rubber band to hold my action cam to an Atlas flat car.
That's just awesome.
Seemed like you found an answer to a non existent problem. Still thumbs up 👍
Luke, what do you use in your video post processing to make the lettering/words appear 3d and move when the camera pans around a scene. Thx
Hi Luke love your work I need some advice please I'm battling to fit Kadee cuplers on a Atheann Amtrak 503 loco any advice please thanks
Have you tried Grandmother Stover's YES glue for paper components? I am amazed at how easy it is to work with, doesn't wrinkle paper, and it has sticking power equal to PVA glues. The only surface I've found it doesn't work on is glass ;)
No, I've never heard of it. It sounds great though! I did a quick google search and it looks like it's a bit difficult to find locally in Australia, I can find some on etsy for $12 however the postage is $30...
I'll see if there is an equivalent here in Aus otherwise I might have to order some and accept the postage cost. Looks like good stuff though, lots of good reviews for it!
@@BoulderCreekRailroad I had a friend visiting from Ballarat this weekend, if I'd known you wanted to try the stuff I could have sent him home with some and he could have posted it to you when he returned home. Darn!
How can I set up the camera with suitable display, preferably a medium sized desktop?
Any plans on making a 3d printed model aircraft?
Hey Luke! You just wanted to ask where do you get sculptamold?
You should make one for the DJI FPV system. Can't remember what its called. Then you could drive around the tracks like you are there with some fpv googles
Luke I could not find this car in your store or parts to build it
How goes the modular model train set?
I wish i would have never given up on my train yard. Never bite off more than you can chew
Great video, next step is remote ops on your layout right?
ha ha yeah it would be cool to use this with a VR headset 😊
good vid thanks lee
Can you please tell what filming gear are you using? Camera, lights?
I film with Panasonic G85, and for lights I use a diy light panel I made, it's 50/50 warm white and cool white LED light strips, there are about 400 LEDs on each panel and I use 5 panels, 3 behind the camera pointing forward and 2 behind me pointed towards the camera up high so they are out of the frame.
Lighting is by far the most important aspect of filming, you could use a phone camera and as long as you have good lighting it will look great 👍
He's a pilot, he's an artist, he's an engineer.....