Raise the camera

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  Rough rendering of the design

Life of a wheelchair photographer isn't easy. We met Aurelian in the MLH group forming workshop, where he introduced his ideal of designing a tool to help him raise the camera to take pictures at a elevated location.

Aurelian has always been taken to photography but his physical limitations have made this difficult. He has been taking images of the world around him for over twenty five years. But the camera set-up and mechanisms that have been available present him with overwhelming difficulties and the situation only became worse as digital camera controls became more layered and dependent on very subtle movements used to control them. Aurelian was able to persist in taking photographic images despite the lack of a hospitable userface or controls. For HackCWRU6 Aurelian decided to bring his special needs and seek out a team to help him with a more functional camera set-up.

There are not many photography assistance devices in the market, expensive and not widely available. In addition, each wheelchair photographer can have some special needs that could not be addressed with standard commercial product. With the help of Yehe, Kevin and Junqi, and rapid prototyping. Aurelian's idea came to real in the HackCWRU6 event. We fully evaluated Aurelian's needs for the wheelchair photography assistance device, developed technical specifications, and generated a functional device through rapid prototyping, in less than one day.

The device is exclusively design for Aurelian, addressing his difficulties by providing simple and robust mounting mechanisms. From now on, he should be able to take pictures at a higher level. For professional engineers, design and rapid prototyping like this device is a simple task, but it can be a great help to people like Aurelian. We hope through the help from the engineers in the community, more people can be helped through simple customized designs and rapid prototyping technology.