3D Printing a Window Mount for a Google Nest Indoor Wired Gen 2 Camera

By Robert Ellison.

Having sworn off Google Nest I just ended up with two more cameras. I didn't pay for them. Google has announced that the original DropCam units are no longer supported. Rather than just knife me in the kidneys like the rest of the smart home industry they provided free replacements.

I stick these in a window looking out. I learned this the hard way after a Nest Outdoor was immediately cut from its secure wiring and stolen. And then a second one. The police thought this was hilarious and whoever stole them is/are now enjoying worthless lumps of plastic. The DropCam was nicely designed to clip out of its mount and into whatever accessory grabbed your fancy. The Google Nest Cam Indoor Wired Gen 2 (snappy name) has a heavy and barely articulated base that makes it worthless for many applications. It also doesn't look like it will detach.

There doesn't seem to be any elegant solution here so I came up with a brutal one.

Step 1: Hacksaw. Just cut off that base as close to the camera as possible.

Step 2: A chute to introduce the camera to the window at a reasonable angle and block indoor reflections. This gets attached to the window with strong double sided tape.

Here's the OpenSCAD code for the window mount:

difference() { cube(size=[90, 120, 50]); translate([45, 50, 0]) { rotate(a=-25, v=[1,0,0]) { translate([0, 0, -40]) { cylinder(h=120, d=66); } } } }

There is also an STL file on thingiverse.

One more horrible hack to confess to. My filament kept getting tangled while printing this. I have it on an under-counter spool and I think it's just too loose so the printer pulls out more slack than it needs and then gets in a mess. Seems like it should be a common problem but all the advice I could find was worthless. I wrapped the spool with kitchen towel until I created some friction but with enough give that the 3D printer could ingest the filament. There is probably a better answer with a more expensive spool that has some tension built in, but this was enough to get the part to print for me.

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(Published to the Fediverse as: 3D Printing a Window Mount for a Google Nest Indoor Wired Gen 2 Camera #etc #3dprint #google #nest #thingiverse How to 3D print a reflection blocking window mount for a Google Nest Cam (Gen 2) )

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