I found a Surf PI pcb only, no electronics, at pretty much half the price that Pcbway wanted for 5 and shipping.
A chap on my local Gumtree had only 1 so I paid and decided to steam forward on the build.
Everything is plastic, coil housing is a dinner plate with some chopped pvc toilet fittings.
The rods are pvc conduit, 20mm and 25mm as well as the handle.
The electronics housing is 80mm rain gutter down spout with end caps and hangers to mount it to the rods.
The arm rest is a section of 110mm sewer pipe cut in half and formed over the rest of the tube to make it a bit wider.
An old seat belt had velcro sew to it for a cuff strap.
Total weight is 1.201 kg's with 3 x 18650 batteries, but none of the rest of the electronics.
Im not sure how long the housing needs to be, at the moment its 300mm long.(pcb is 210mm long, plus 7cm needed for the batt sled.)
The speaker mount on the pcb is at the front which explains why i put the headphone jack on the side.
The 3 pots are for Delay, Tune and Volume, Offset is a trimmer on the pcb which I only expect to use at first setup.
I used cable ties to attach the hangers to the main 25mm rod.
The dinner plate coil houses a coil of 0.4mm enameled copper wire, 29 turns at 235mm dia wrapped with pvc tape. I then covered it with aluminium tape as a shield and wired 1 end to one leg of the coil.
1.3m of RG58 is hard wired to the coil and everything is drenched in hot melt glue. (I used about 2 sticks)
The other end of the coax is terminated with a 50 ohm BNC fitting.
and of course, the obligatory toilet seat M8 nylon bolt
Scratching through Thingiverse for cam locks, downloaded one for camera tripods and modified it in Tinkercad.
Of course the original creator assumed you have the lever, which I didnt so I had to brainstorm what it would look like.
The rubber square in the above pic is from an old bike tyre.
While its no Manfrotto, it works.
I struggled with the electronics, only to discover the supplier had given me a faulty NE5534 which made adjusting the offset zero voltage on pin 6 impossible.
Final weight using 3 x 600mah dispo vape batts is 1175g.
A chap on my local Gumtree had only 1 so I paid and decided to steam forward on the build.
Everything is plastic, coil housing is a dinner plate with some chopped pvc toilet fittings.
The rods are pvc conduit, 20mm and 25mm as well as the handle.
The electronics housing is 80mm rain gutter down spout with end caps and hangers to mount it to the rods.
The arm rest is a section of 110mm sewer pipe cut in half and formed over the rest of the tube to make it a bit wider.
An old seat belt had velcro sew to it for a cuff strap.
Total weight is 1.201 kg's with 3 x 18650 batteries, but none of the rest of the electronics.
Im not sure how long the housing needs to be, at the moment its 300mm long.(pcb is 210mm long, plus 7cm needed for the batt sled.)
The speaker mount on the pcb is at the front which explains why i put the headphone jack on the side.
The 3 pots are for Delay, Tune and Volume, Offset is a trimmer on the pcb which I only expect to use at first setup.
I used cable ties to attach the hangers to the main 25mm rod.
The dinner plate coil houses a coil of 0.4mm enameled copper wire, 29 turns at 235mm dia wrapped with pvc tape. I then covered it with aluminium tape as a shield and wired 1 end to one leg of the coil.
1.3m of RG58 is hard wired to the coil and everything is drenched in hot melt glue. (I used about 2 sticks)
The other end of the coax is terminated with a 50 ohm BNC fitting.
and of course, the obligatory toilet seat M8 nylon bolt
Scratching through Thingiverse for cam locks, downloaded one for camera tripods and modified it in Tinkercad.
Of course the original creator assumed you have the lever, which I didnt so I had to brainstorm what it would look like.
The rubber square in the above pic is from an old bike tyre.
While its no Manfrotto, it works.
I struggled with the electronics, only to discover the supplier had given me a faulty NE5534 which made adjusting the offset zero voltage on pin 6 impossible.
Final weight using 3 x 600mah dispo vape batts is 1175g.
Last edited:
