Totally agree with you Joe, DD retrofit to the existing gimbals with radians would have been a nice intermidiate to us...
Don't want to turn this into a barroom brawl, but there's precedent for this sort of thing. Witness back in the 80's when Canon decided to kill off their old lens mount in order to leapfrog to the EF mount. Nikon held out and kept their stuff backward-compatible. But they also suffered as a result when the digital revolution began, and Canon had a considerable advantage because they took a leap. And most of their customers stuck with them (including me). Freefly has limited development resources, and I'm pretty sure they evaluated all their options, and decided to produce only the MR10 for now. But looking at the gimbal in photos, it does look like you could retrofit the DD bits. But I would guess that your cost savings over buying a new gimbal altogether would not be as much as you would think. The electronics in our copters are FAR more expensive than the structural and mechanical parts. So like it or not, IMHO they made a prudent decision. But there might be a market there if somebody wants to take it on (building a DD replacement for the CS servo/pulley mechanism that uses Radians).
I am at NAB and I had my Aircraft on display last night at a private event not directly related to the conference. Everyone at the event are NAB attendees/exhibitors. Allot of people saw my current FF Gimbal and thought it was the MOVI. I had to explain how this one is its prototype that the early adopters have. It looks like the scope for this rig is more to compete with Glidecams and Steadycams. My DP was pointing out how much those cost, so obviously it looks like FF has done the research into how much these costs. I have the same sentiments as the rest. My business partner and co-founder was basically pointing out that they are moving in the pro-direction. Obviously our birds were set up with the RC hobbiest in mind initially. The current gimbal when tuned to the Micrometer level and when the belts are tight and the motors and bearings are intact it works the gimbal is adequate at best but not ideal for the perfect shots without disabling Pan axis and yawing the AC to simulate ramping effects. I hope 15K comes with one hell of a warranty. My concern is how much push and pull force the shafts on the virticle axis will take from multiple takeoffs and landings. I have already had a bearing go out a servo start to fail on my current rig. I am replacing these components tonight after NAB for a shoot tomorrow.
Matt - take a deep breath. I concur with Steve's previous comment in that the Radian is Special Thing and I have no regrets in purchasing them. But I understand. ;-) Steve - This is a bit different. Capturing the glidecam market with this technology is a really good business decision and I wish them well. But to abandon the existing base of Radian stabilized gimbals is disappointing because while I know Canon does not care, I assumed Tabb does. Maybe if there is enough 'request' they will find a way to accommodate us. Also, see Aesop's fable about the dog that looks into the pond and sees another dog with a bigger bone so drops his bone to get the bigger one. Specifically: while they may be first to market, I don't see anything so remarkable that would prevent countless knockoffs as well as the major companies that dominate that market firing back with their own versions. (They certainly have the funds to do the R&D quickly). What I am saying is Freefly's dominance with MOVI may be short lived. But...I digress... Joe
Joe, that makes very good sense. We'll all have to wait and see. It's kind of like the Tesla. Eventually, we'll probably all be driving cars like the Tesla. They're capitalizing on the pervasive desire amongst the well-heeled to be the first on their block. But this is a business. With all the hype, every production house and others are going to be demanding folks who can deliver the kinds of special things that Vincent and Tabb showed in their demo shorts. My guess is if you're well-connected, your $15,000 will be paid back with interest before there's a legitimate competitor.
In an act of mock-defiance I just burned through 3 Zippy 8000's here in pre-sunset flying on the 'other' west coast. Now that I am done pouting I guess the only thing left to do is plunk down a deposit... At least they are 'bundling' the handles with the Movi MR Joe
Just got back from the trade show, I can say it is a game changer. It much more refined than the FF Radian gimbal. The motors are very precise. The gimbal is not using the Radians. It is using a completely different setup. it no longer has a separate IMU for each axis. It uses one IMU mounted to fixed gimbal axis, similar to how the MK does it on theirs. As for cost 15K is for the RED and heavier birds, I think 7.5 For the DSLR size gimbals I believe. It comes with the handle bars to use as a handmount system in addition to the aircraft. For DSLR;'s they are cheaper than the Photohigher which is based at 10K. They are on par with the Hoverfly system.
Thank you for the report, Shaun! Did anybody give you an indication of when the DSLR-sized gimbal might be put into production? That's the one that's on my radar. Personally, phenomenal cameras are getting smaller, not bigger. Witness the new Black Magic camera.
They did not say specifically when the DSLR version would be out. It looks like they hope to have everything out at the end of summer. There are some technical issues that they are ironing out with the MOVI. There is an issue at the moment with the gyro. If it goes past 30 degrees the gyro seems to have an issue that they are working out. According to Adam, the MOVI's stabilizer is based on the Synapse flight controller. The Synapse is also going to be a huge game changer. It will have dual battery redundancy. The batteries plug into a failsafe bus. Unlike how people are doing it now, using a pigtail adapter to tie in the battery, where one battery can bring down the other. The power distribution system allow for a failed battery to be shunted from the system. It will be able to fly on birds almost as small as blade mqx's upto some of these superlifters. FF is working on a small bird similar to a MQX but will use the Synapse. The synapse is suppose to allow for smaller birds to fly simillar to the bigger ones ideal for training. I also saw the competitors stuff. Hoverfly has a very robust direct drive gimbal designed with ultra heavy-lifters in mind. I did not see it working, and I will have to reserve judgement on that system until I see it work. For Aircraft, the New Zealand guys Droidworx, have a super skyjib 8. The thing is using 80 amp ESC's and the motors are the diameter of soda cans the aircraft diameter was almost 5 feet. RED camera's are really embracing multirotor. They had a skyjib 8 with an Epic on display at their area. I saw the craziest thing at the RED area. Someone has a 16 rotor coaxial, I could get not get info on it because the I saw it by the time the exibit hall was closing. The thing I noticed this year, is that the copters are getting larger and larger. A newcomer called turbo ace has a RED capable bird. I saw them at cinegear last year and they were a joke, now they are going to be a major player. Lastly I saw the Zenmuse GOPRO direct drive gimbal. Now there is a direct drive just for GoPro cameras. Phothigher's direct drive is impressive. They have the cleanest setup I have seen. They have internal slots and a video bus that is all integrated internally. I did see the Blackmagic camera. It is going to be better than the first one. They are going to release a 4K raw version. They just showcased a small 1080P camera the size of standard micro4/3's cameras that will be ideal for the Zenmuse. Its really exiting, aliot of cool stuff being done. In two years we have graduated from the Wright B-Flyer to the Boeing 707
If these guys had MoVI this video would have been even more awesome! You can seen they used some sort of stabilization in post. Still awesome but I can see where MoVI would have kicked ass here.