Webcam Mounting

So the webcam fell down today. You can watch it fall on the timelapse if you like (Check out yesterday to watch it start to slip).

If you watched the video, you may notice that it falls around sometime around five o'clock (if you didn't, now you know). Not surprisingly, this is the time when the sun is more or less shining directly on where the webcam is mounted, which is the top frame of my window. It's not surprising because it was held up with duct tape -- a lot of duct tape, as evidenced here:

I regretfully didn't take a photo of the duct tape before throwing it away. You can probably tell by the glue spot however that I used plenty. "If it fell", you might say, "then you obviously didn't use enough duct tape." Well, if you notice the piece of tape stuck to the frame in the picture, that's the first piece I used to hold up the camera. It fell, so I used more duct tape, which is what all that glue is from. Now, I realize that duct tape is mankind's best invention (immunizations - ha, electricity? who needs it). Unfortunately, it does have some limitations (as a good portion of my readers wince in pain -- you know who you are). Heat is the enemy of duct tape. "That doesn't make sense," you may say, if you don't know when to shut up, "isn't duct tape meant for ductwork? I mean, it has duct right in the name." Well, no actually, it isn't. If you take a gander at the wikipedia entry you'll see that duct tape was originally meant as a waterproof sealant for ammunition cases, and actually called duck tape. It was only later put into use for sealing ducts, which, it turns out it is poorly suited towards. So, while I could use more duct tape to hold up the camera, it would be futile, since the heat from the sun would just melt the glue again, and have it fall.

I decided I'd need something more heatproof. You'll notice the string in the previous picture, that was to hold the camera up should it fall. I thought perhaps I could use string to hold it up, but there was no real way to mount it. (Normally I'd just screw the damn thing in, or use some hard as nails or somesuch, but, I alas live in a dorm, and would likely have to pay for anything that turned out to be permanent.) I then realized that some sort of bracket might work, and I happened to have two convenient screws to mount it to.

Expansion slot covers seemed to fit the job. Luckily I have about one billion of them, so sacrificing two for the job isn't a big loss (try to guess which is the one from my old 486 and which is from my new black cube case). It's certainly not a perfect job, nor a pretty one, but I think it ought to get the job done.

I put the string back on for good measure. I figure the most it can fall is a few mm, since the string should prevent it from going off the one side where there is no bracket. of course time will only tell.

Well, that was completely unnecessary, but I figured, I've got a digital camera now, I might as well document all these stupid little projects I do. Hopefully you weren't bored to death (and if you were -- how are you still reading this?).