I decided the top frame would sit facing upwards and the mirror would have its dress face forward. You’ll see images with tape marked “S” (for “side”), and others more descriptively like “top rear” and an arrow pointing up (although yes the arrow’s probably a little redundant given I don’t usually write upside-down).Īs shown in the end-on image of the extrusion (above), the frames have a “dress” face at the front and a rear channel where the corner pieces are inserted. The need for the tape became apparent after accidentally assembling one frame as square and wondering why things didn’t line up. I first assembled the three frames and sat them in position on their side, then applied tape to all the edges and marked their location. a spline roller will help with the wedge rubber.bench grinder (GREAT for trimming bolts to length) + safety glasses and earmuffs.bench vice (if you’re trimming bolts with the hacksaw or file).points file or similar fine-edged file (for restoring damaged threads).white tape & permanent marker (for labelling all the pieces). ![]() socket set (optional but very handy for holding/driving the nuts).The rest of the hardware was fairly cheap, so I’d say the whole lot set me back around $AUD270 ($US194 / €164). Click on the photo for an enlarged version and a better look at it all.įor the "outer hinge" assembly – see textĪpprox 3mm (1/8") thick, these are used as spacers Here are all the bits laid out on the bench. I made SEVERAL mistakes in the process, and I’ll share those with you as I step through the build below. I standardised on 3/16" Whitworth nuts and bolts as those are fairly common here, but you can choose whatever works for you. Some schoolyard trigonometry showed that with a 300x400mm mirror at 45° to the horizontal, the matching "glass" in the top and bottom frames would be 300x282mm. I started with a purely arbitrary size of 300x400mm (12×16") for the mirror and went from there. The autocue described herein came together over a few months here in Sydney, Australia. In reality I think your chances of sourcing bolts EXACTLY the right length are next to nothing, so be prepared to hacksaw, file and/or grind bolts to the correct lengths. These end-on views of the extrusion show how little room there is for movement in the bolt shafts, and for the nuts that clamp the hinges to the frame. The diagonal frame holds the mirror, the top and bottom frames are for mounting/stability, and the hinges allow you to fold the autocue flat for storage or transport. My autocue comprises three such frames bolted together with hinges into a "Z" fold arrangement. Having sourced myself some glass, I needed a way of housing the assembly, and the picture frames made from relatively cheap aluminium extrusion struck me as ideal, especially given aluminium is light, thin, and easily worked. The camera only captures you, and yet all you see is the image on the monitor. All you need is a piece of front-mirrored glass at 45° to you, with a monitor below (or above!) it and the camera behind. The idea behind the autocue is a fairly simple one. Roll forward to 2020 though, and with lots of us now working from home and participating in non-stop meetings, I thought it was time to make matters into my own hands. I saw on Twitter only yesterday that Microsoft has apparently delivered something similar in the Surface Pro X with a feature they’re calling "Eye Contact". There will be a camera in the four corners of the screen and digital magic will stitch together a coherent moving image of you with eyes pointing ‘naturally’ at the camera. ![]() ![]() ![]() The hubby has more recently suggested it’ll be delivered via algorithm instead. I remember saying I’d race out and buy two the day they hit the market (so my two monitors matched). I theorised that the fix would be when a screen vendor figured out how to place a camera mid-screen directly behind the glass. Thankfully the NBN has delivered on the first component here in Oz, but technology has so far failed to come through on the second, and so most of us participate in video calls with the participants all looking off to the side while you’re talking to them. It quickly occurred to me that this wasn’t going to take off until we had two things: 1) the upload bandwidth to support a decent outgoing video stream and 2) the ability to look at the incoming video of the person you were speaking with, whilst at the same time staring directly down the lens of the camera. My introduction to desktop video came back in the days of OCS 2007 R1.
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