Earlier this year I did interviews at a Maker Fair in Cedar Rapids Iowa. My friend Keith Claussen helped with the camera work and it turned out great. This was great fun and was another nice feature to post here on the blog. The one thing that I found to be annoying as well as distracting while shooting the interviews was using my wireless microphone. The mic worked flawlessly. But with the way it was set up it caused problems that I dealt with through the day.
This is the wireless mic that I use with my interviews. Azden puts out a great product and I have never had a problem with using it as far as sound quality is concerned. When I shoot a video project here at the workshop I use the lavalier mic (the little one with the tie clip shown in the photo above). This is fine for one person but makes it difficult to get the sound I want while doing interviews. So I use the big mic instead. The wireless transmitter for the mic is either clipped to my belt or stuffed into a pocket.
Now the problems or should I say the inconvenience of using the bigger mic shows up. The mic is plugged into the transmitter with a cord that is three and a half feet long. The wire looks clunky on video and is always in the way while I am doing interviews. This was not acceptable.
I thought that if I could make a setup that would combine the transmitter with the mic I would not have to deal with the dangling wire problem. So back to my computer I started designing what I thought would be the solution to the problem. The image above shows the transmitter buried inside an enclosure and mounted to the bottom of the microphone.
To keep the size of the enclosure smallest for the transmitter and the microphone wire I fed the mic wire out of one side of the lower case and plugged it into the transmitter from the outside.
Here is the lower portion of the enclosure ready for 3D printing. You can see the double compartment that was designed into it to hold the transmitter on one side and the mic wire on the opposite side of the case. To give the enclosure a little more strength and some design features I added the four ribbed bands that run around the outer faces of the case. The opening where the mic would be plugged into also has an opening to turn the transmitter on and off. I also cut an opening on the long side just to show off the name of the transmitter and give it a professional look.
The top portion of the enclosure has a lid with a tapered tube to match the shape of the microphone. This lid is held in place using 6-32 machine screws and nuts that are slid into slots on the under side of the lid. The mic is a simple friction fit and the wiring from the mic is fed down through the tube to the right side of the enclosure where it leads out of the enclosure and is plugged into the transmitter.
Here's the completed assembly. Looks really pro and went together very well. The wireless microphone stands 10.5 inches tall and the enclosure is 3.25 inches tall, 3.5 inches long, and 2.25 inches wide. Total weight of the setup comes to 12.6 ounces with the battery in the transmitter and ready to use. The enclosure only added a few ounces to the mic/transmitter setup and now I no longer have to mess around with the wire from the mic to the transmitter! The TTW (The Tinker's Workshop) nameplate adds another great touch to the assembly while filming interviews too. A nice neat package that will look great on my next interview and will make doing them a lot simpler in the process.
No comments:
Post a Comment