I’m always on the look out for new and whacky places to mount the GoPro on my Mojo HDR. I reckoned a shoe level mount that moved with the rider could provide some cool points of view and interesting blur effects especially for stills — along with nauseatingly spinning video…haha!

Thanks to the unused underside SPD clip the puzzle was already largely solved. All I needed to make was a camera mounting bar that clipped into the underside of the pedal and shazaam… job done.

 

 

A strip of 2mm thick aluminium plate leftover from prototyping my mountain unicycle handlebar was perfect for the main bar – lightweight and strong. I scavenged the remainder of the necessary parts from a busted old SPD shoe – the inner plate, cleat and bolts.

 

 

My main concern with the pedal mount was that the bar would immediately unclip on impact with trailside objects versus forcefully rotating the pedal with my foot still attached to the other side! For that reason I opted to angle the bar to the side so the forces from any impact would replicate the twisting SPD unclipping motion, thereby releasing the bar instantly. The angled bar approach also created four camera positions – leftside front, leftside back, rightside front, rightside back.

 

 

The 2×2 grid of holes allows the cleat and plate to be rotated to create the four camera positions. I had a spare camera mounting thumb screw from a broken Manfrotto quick release plate but you could just as well use a screw from your local hardware store.

Here’s what both sides of the finished bar look like, below. I had some spare rubber mat so stuck that to the top side of the bar to create a little more grip for the plastic GoPro tripod mount. I also drilled additional holes along the bar to create a few more mounting options.

 

 

The finished SPD pedal cam mount in position and ready to go!

 

 

Here are a couple of examples of stills taken using the pedal mount. The camera is fired using the GoPro Wireless Remote mounted on the handlebar.

 

 

 

It is possible to take short snippets of cool video with the pedal mount, especially when the pedals are kept level. Start spinning and yeah… the footage can get nauseating pretty quickly 🙂

Used sparingly though the pedal mount point of view is pretty cool especially for stills IMO, and easy enough to throw into the backpack so why not?!