Assuming that the price of Tiffen’s soon-to-be-released Smoothee iPhone Steadicam would be beyond his budget, Babyology writer Ben Gurnsberg built this amazing iPhone steadicam robotic arm out of spare LEGO Technic pieces.
It looks cool, but how’d it work? Not well, says Gurnsberg.
Unfortunately, this story has a sad ending. I forgot to take one small thing into account when setting out on my quest – Lego is plastic and fairly flexible. Not only did every video I shot contain almost as much wobble as it did without my creation, but the audio was filled with little pops and cracks as the Lego flexed and clicked against itself.
Ultimately, Gurnsberg recommends saving your money and buying a Smoothe when it comes out. I don’t know: the Smoothee just doesn’t look nearly as cool as Gurnsberg’s own, DIY robot skeleton arm.
John Brownlee is a writer for Fast Company, and a contributing writer here at CoM. He has also written for Wired, Playboy, Boing Boing, Popular Mechanics, VentureBeat, and Gizmodo. He lives in Boston with his wife and two parakeets. You can follow him here on Twitter.
