September 25, 2022
Description
One of the most important things you can do to keep students engaged in an online lecture is to make sure to maintain (virtual) eye contact. To be most natural, you really want to be looking pretty much straight ahead, which means the webcam should be at eye level. Of course, you will not be looking straight ahead if the screen you're using for presenting isn't also straight ahead -- as opposed to well below the camera. I also find it very important to have lots of screen space for participant, chat, and various shareable windows, so I work with a 43" 4K TV as my monitor and want the webcam pointed at me from roughly the middle of the screen.
So, here's a very simple tall webcam mount made of 3D-printed top and bottom parts on a length of 1 1/4" OD black plastic pipe. The camera mounts on top via a standard 1/4-20 thread. This places the webcam roughly in the middle of my 4K display without blocking too much of the display. Note that the files here are a slightly improved version, not an exact match for the stand shown above.
Printer Brand:
Anycubic
Printer:
Kossel
Rafts:
No
Supports:
No
Resolution:
any
Infill:
any
Filament: generic PLA black
Notes:
The two pieces print in the orientations given without supports. The bottom actually has unsupported spans in it (for the USB cable path), but they're short enough to print reliably on nearly any printer.
Start by printing both pieces and cutting a pipe to the desired length. Screw a 1/4-20 bolt from below (or pivoting head from above, as shown here) into the threaded hole in the top piece and mount the camera on it. Route the USB cable from the camera through the slot in the top and down through the pipe. Push the top on the pipe. Next push the pipe into the bottom printed piece. Finally, push the USB cable into the horizontal channel in the bottom piece and stick padding on the underside of the bottom (I used neoprene cork here). Done!License:
Creative Commons — Attribution
ProfHankD
