Cam Duck

By Tim Quax on 29 september 2007

The original idea

Back in the day when webcams were hot, I had one of those nice round Logitech Quickcam's. Just like the rest of the world. So I thought it could use some improving; and with my preference for rubberducks the choice was an easy one.

The Cam Duck is born; it's a rubber duck with a built in webcam. With this mod, as well as the USB duck mod, I made different versions and experimented somewhat here and there to make a product out of the mod.

Version number two

Unfortunately the duck above was too big to be of service as a webcam. Though especially in combination with the big lens of the Quickcam it has an awesome visual effect. It still won't work cause of it's size, so i made the one below. This one's about 6 cm (2.3"), so the size is perfect.

This is how I made the duck:

I trashed the webcam casing to get the PCB, I then seperated the PCB from the lens;
The diameter of the lens is cut out of the duck;
I sliced the edge of the hole real thin, the less rubber there will be, the better the quality of the lens will be maintained;
I cut open the bottom of the duck (through the mold line, so it's not noticable);
Contact points of the PCB soldered off;
Cut a hole in the back of the duck, and put a rubber ring in it for the cable;
Put the cable in the duck, and soldered the wires to the contactpoints on the PCB;
Glued the contact points and wires with a glue gun;
Glued the cable to the rubber ring on the duck;
Put the PCB inside the duck, and mounted the lens on (the rubber between them will keep it secure);
Stuffed the inside of the duck with a piece of sponge, and glued the bottom back in.

I just wasn't too happy about the looks. It's just not it. So, back to the drawing board. Drawing board, pub, meh.

Version number three

In order to correct the looks of the mod above, I needed a different rubber duck with a different webcam, because the lens has to look good on the specific rubber duck. This caused the PCB of the webcam, the position of the lens and the space in the new duck to not match up properly. Needless to say, that sucks. It means the lens can't stick out the chest of the mod. No problem, says me; The lens is now subtly sticking out the duck's mouth.

The final version of the mod is found below here. As I did with the USB Duck, the Cam Duck is perfected, as well as the fabrication process is made quite efficient.

At the time I write this, I have opened the webshop USBDuck.com, and sold dozens of USB Ducks already. They're made in 3 different colors; yellow, blue and green. You can get them here.

Update august 24th 2009: The Cam Ducks are not available from USBDuck.com anymore. The webshop has been in business succesfully for the last 2 years, but it's time for some new projects.