Hero — decoy mounted on a car roof, low three-quarter angle, dusk or covered garage, rim light along the body. Full-bleed, shot wide enough to crop to both 16:9 and 4:5.
The 360 camera you can leave on the roof.
A dummy 360 action camera that mounts exactly like a real one. Leave it up when you park. If it walks, you are out a printed part.
The problem
You take it down every single time.
A 360 camera on a roof mount is expensive, obvious, and held on by a suction cup. So it comes down before you walk away — every car park, every shop run, every night on the street.
Or it stays up, and one day you come back and it is gone. That is several hundred pounds of camera sitting on the outside of a parked car, advertising itself.
Empty suction mount on a wet roof, nothing attached. Reads as "the camera already came down".
The fix
Leave a decoy up instead.
Phantom 360 screws onto the same 1/4"-20 mount you already own and stays there. Parked, overnight, at the shop, in the long-stay lot.
It records nothing and it is worth nothing, so there is nothing to lose but the part itself. Take the real camera with you, or leave it in the glovebox, and stop thinking about it.
A camera on a roof is also its own deterrent. Someone sizing up a car may decide this one is not worth being filmed.
Decoy mounted on the roof, tight three-quarter, near-black background, single rim light down the body edge.
Side by side
Which one is real?
From the pavement, at a glance, through a windscreen — that is the only distance that matters.
Left frame. Read the comparison-shot guidance in docs/photography.md before shooting this.
Right frame. Identical lighting and lens to the left frame, or the comparison does not read.
Answer at the bottom of the FAQ.
How it is made
Built to sit outside.
Printed in ASA, not PLA. It is the material used for exterior automotive trim because it holds up to UV and to heat inside a closed car.
A brass heat-set insert, not a printed thread. It takes the same standard mount screw as the camera it stands in for, and it will not strip after a few changes.
The lens is an acrylic cabochon set into the body, so it catches light like a lens instead of reading as a flat printed face.
What it does not do
It protects the camera, not the car. If someone decides to take it, they can still damage the mount or the paint getting it off — exactly as they could with the real thing.
Phantom 360 changes what you lose, not whether someone tries. We would rather say that here than in a refund email.
Not shipping yet
Find out when it goes on sale.
The first run is still being finished. Leave an email and you get one message when it is buyable. Nothing else.