How the heck do you get the Mapillary mount to work?

Contributing and equipment
1

I am having trouble getting the free mount to work. I saw a post from May 13 about this problem. The poster basically gave up and jury rigged his own mount.

The issue is that my windshield does not have enough of an angle to allow mounting on the glass. The camera is 1/3 filled with the hood of my car (bonnet for my friends across the pond). No matter how I try to fuss with it, I can’t get a better angle.

Some people recommended mounting on the dash. My dash is short and so the phone is right up against the windshield so I can barely get the phone in and out. Even were I to stick with this option, the dash is angled down from the instrument panel so I have to point the camera up so high that I end up not seeing the road in front of me.

Some people noted that the poster on the May 13 post may not have been using the mount properly. For those who have no problem with the Mapillary mount, could someone post photos of their setup? I would love to get mapping but I can’t get the darn thing to work!

Thanks in advance!

PS: For future variants of the Mapillary mount, I think having two ball joints or an elbow joint in the middle of the arm rather than a fixed piece would allow the mount to be more flexible and work for a wider range of vehicles.

2

I’ll see if I can post a pic, but I figured a way to get it to work, and I drive a Jeep with a fairly low-angle windshield.

I have mine mounted up by the rear-view mirror, with the suction cup attached up and to the right of the bracket that holds the phone.

3

@CaliforniaBear I hear your frustration. I haven’t mapped from too many different cars but with one of them I also found it impossible to get a good angle because of the sky/hood tradeoff. I’d say if it really doesn’t work, prefer the hood and hope for the days when we get computer vision to solve the problem by being able to “make the hood invisible” :wink: