Tall Webcam Stand

thingiverse

One of the most important things you can do to keep students engaged in an online lecture is to make sure to maintain (virtual) eye contact. To be most natural, you really want to be looking pretty much straight ahead, which means the webcam should be at eye level. Of course, you will not be looking straight ahead if the screen you're using for presenting isn't also straight ahead -- as opposed to well below the camera. I also find it very important to have lots of screen space for participant, chat, and various shareable windows, so I work with a 43" 4K TV as my monitor and want the webcam pointed at me from roughly the middle of the screen. So, here's a very simple tall webcam mount made of 3D-printed top and bottom parts on a length of 1 1/4" OD black plastic pipe. The camera mounts on top via a standard 1/4-20 thread. This places the webcam roughly in the middle of my 4K display without blocking too much of the display. Note that the files here are a slightly improved version, not an exact match for the stand shown above.