Easy and cheap Go Pro pole mount using PVC conduit

By on December 21, 2013 in Building, It Worked for Me

I purchased a Go Pro camera for my wife for Christmas this year and thought I would build some type of pole mount for it. I went out to my shop to look for something that might work for a mount and found a good solution in my box of PVC conduit odds and ends. Instead of building a single use fixed mount I decided it would be better to built something with a standard 1/2 conduit end, this way it could be reused for a wide range of mounts. PVC conduit is inexpensive, strong and lightweight.

First I started off with a PVC schedule 40 single gang electrical box with 2 outlets (top and bottom). Since I was going to be cutting it with power tools I removed the only piece of metal; a small grounding terminal (green screw). It simply pulls out.

The next step is to mark the spot with a pencil where the flat adhesive mount will fit.

Then I cut the box in half (you can make 2 complete mounts from the one symmetrical box). And sliced off the sides. I left around 1/8″ extra room beyond the marked lines for the mount. I used my band saw, but a handsaw would work equally well since the PVC cuts easily. For the final cut I used a hand saw.

As you can see with a couple of cuts we now have a mount that will fit on the end of any 1/2″ PVC conduit pipe. I then went to my belt sander and sanded the edges down to match the spots where the mount would go and rounded off any of the corners. I used a small hand file to finish the surface so there wasn’t any rough edges.

If I wanted the mount to be permantly attached to my pipe I could have glued them together, but since I wanted it to be reusable I drilled a small hole through the mount and pipe and ran a quick tie through it. This is an easy way to prevent the 2 pieces from coming apart and it takes one second to cut the tie to remove the mount.

Here’s what it looks like on a pole with the mount adapter attached.

It can easily be used for different size mounts or to create any kind of odd mounting configuration you might have in mind (sorry about the one fuzzy picture).

Since the mount can be adapted to work with any PVC conduit, a 1/2 to 3/4 or 1″ adapter could also be used, you could build all kinds of large and small mounts. For example if you wanted to get a go pro 20 feet in the air in an auditorium you could easily build a frame using heavier 3/4 or 1″ pvc and mount the camera at the top.