He has a simple frame with a hanging camera over the main piping. You needn’t overcomplicate things with piping either, as demonstrated by over on Twitter. If you’d like to check out the full tutorial, you can see it here. Obviously this play area and size of frame is a little larger than you’d need to accomplish playing Magic, but the idea can easily be scaled down. I wouldn’t call myself an expert in DIY, but this looks well within the realms of doable to me! You can simply wire in your camera and get going. Check out this amazing DIY foldable mount, courtesy of Tinkerneering:

If you still have safe access to a local hardware store or online ordering, and you’re feeling ambitious, then lengths of pipe can be a great way to build a frame. If you’re not lucky enough to own a suitable mount for the camera that can clamp onto your play area, don’t fret there are many, many alternatives, and the only real limit is your imagination. One pro tip from me: Any card sleeve with a matte front (like the Guilds sleeves, or the Chibi sleeves by Ultra Pro) tend to actually have more glare than a gloss sleeve. In the video, he discusses lighting, which is one of the most important parts of getting yourself set up right. The ever affable Jim over at The Spike Feeders has put together this cracking video on how to get set up. Securing the camera and giving yourself enough room to play is the difficult part.

Luckily, playmats are the right aspect ratio, so once you have the height down, you’ll be able to see the whole playmat with ease. You’ll want to have your webcam a set distance above the playmat so that it can capture the full view. The difficult part lies in building a rig. You’ll be able to watch the game on your laptop, and broadcast your own board state from your webcam. Using a desktop or laptop computer, with an external USB webcam, is arguably the easiest way to get going.

How’s best to do this? Well, there are two main ways: Using a Computer & Web Cam

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