Setup: Red Epic, Arri Ultra primes, RT motion remote focus, teradek bolt pro 2000K, v-lok adapter plate aka. a LOT of money. Was testing yesterday and it was fine with the setup. ISSUE 1: Tried shooting today and the rig would all of a sudden just go limp and need a reboot. HIGHLY annoying and embarrassing! It's not as if it's loosing signal I don't know what it is. This was fairly constant but not happening for any reason. Sometimes it would happen while we were stationary, sometimes it would happen during a shot. I have no way of testing it now because our company has been sent HOME because they are going to do it all now handheld today! I'm really pissed off. Given it could be a fault with me but I'm perfectly balanced and my gains are as high as I can get them. Now, I didn't check the gains every time the gimbal went limp but checked them first and they were fine. Unless somehow they have re-written themselves and gone way down. Would this cause this to happen?? ISSUE 2: It could be a battery issue but the battery plate wasn't giving enough power to get the camera powered up. We would put a battery with 3 bars on it and it would instantly drop to one on the plate. All I'm running off it is the teradek and the remote focus. Not that much juice. The teradek and remote focus all got enough power to get themselves up and running but not the camera. At MINIMUM I should be getting 20-30mins per battery. Not not even enough power to power up the camera. Does this sound like a plate issue or a battery issue? Barring in mind it's not the camera and I tried 4 different full batteries. Any help ASAP would be much appreciated. Lost a lot of money and shots today and if they don't want us back it could be even more... Thanks, Sam
Sam can you post some photos of your setup. For the first item after you set the gains are you writing them to memory? If not then any time you power down the MoVI the previous settings will be lost. Also are you operating in Remote mode with the transmitter? For item 2 the photos will help. Are you running everything you have listed from the MoVI battery? In other words splitting power from the MoVI battery to power the other items.
Hi Gary, Attached is a photo from the rig setup yesterday. nothing changed today apart from we put a filter on and rebalanced. I wrote the gains to the memory yesterday. Didn't write them again today..? Every time the movi goes limp I have to power it down. Does this mean it wont have kept the gains I wrote yesterday? We are operating in both remote and majestic mode. Issue happens in both modes. No the only thing being powered off the movi battery is the rig itself. I checked the battery when we got sent away and it was only at around 50%. I'm running the epic, remote focus and teradek off the freefly side v-lok plate. We were fine this morning then all of a sudden, issue number 2. Thanks, Sam
Sam, I'm really sorry to hear that. Getting sent home from this mishap feels terrible. I'm not sure this advice would help at all, but I'm considering making some type of central database of all the Movi owners so that in case situations like this arise, hopefully there will be a fellow Movi owner less than 30 minutes away that we could call on. Would this have helped at all in this situation?
The bit you described with the battery’s behavior sounds a lot like exhausted LiPos, meaning they were somehow completely discharged and damaged, or not properly charged. Which is of no help in your current predicament, unfortunately. Have you tried removing one or more of the devices you have attached to the battery? Maybe something is shorted or has experienced some other kind of electrical fault. Good luck!
I had this issue once as well. First, make sure that whatever doesn't need to be on the gimbal isn't. Sounds like the teradek and any accessories can be off it. Ive had luck with putting the FF transmitter just below the top handle and the teradek off my operating monitor. Then of course balance. My pan balance was off and so with higher gains the system was fighting against me and went limp. After getting the balance spot on and tweaking the gains as high as i could without oscillations, i brought them down another 2-3 points. I found that letting them oscillate and dialing down until it stops, is sometimes still to high for operating. If you're using a tablet to control it leave it in your pocket so you can tweak and makes changes on the fly. And yes, when it goes limp and you have to reboot the gimbal, everything gets zeroed out having to readjust your gain settings. As for the red plate, that shouldn't affect your gimbal as its only powering camera and accessories. My suggestion, which seems to work, is using the carbon Vlock strictly for the camera and possibly the FF transmitter if you do mount it to the body. But run everything else off a second lipo battery that you can bongo tie to the back of the top handle. Using the lipo to ptap adapter just power off that. This way your v lock has limited drain and you balance power distribution. Think of it like a stedicam. they usually run 2-3 batts. One for camera, one for the sled and one for accessories. Using the same principal you can keep the system sufficiently powered, streamlined and still stay lightweight. As for trouble shooting your plate and anything else, contact your local camera house and ask them to come in to test out your setup if they aren't busy. If you have a relationship with any of them I'm sure it shouldn't be a problem. Hope that helps.
Sam no photos attached. And if you have written the settings then they are in some form of static memory on the MoVI and don't need to be written again unless you change setups and need to re-do the gain settings for the new setup.
Sounds like either a hidden balance issue or/and a damaged LiPo. Be sure that you can balance the rig at various roll settings.
Hi Jason, No this wouldn't have helped. There are only 3 in Ireland that I know of. We were in the ass end of nowhere in a forest. Thanks for the concern.
Hi Christopher. Only the essentials were on the gimbal. The FF brain is hung just below the camera via speedy clamp. The teradek is on the top handle and the cables run down. Yeah I always carry the table in my pocket but at the pace we were going at it was impossible to do anything.. I thought the gains, because they were written to memory would stay as they were. Are you saying that once the rig is powered down I need to redo the gains again? It's might mean powering just the camera and the FF off the Vlock. The teradek doesnt take much juice at all but it might have to be that way.. The strange thing is it was working for a few shots then decided to do "issue 2"
Yeah, everytime i power the gimbal down i have to reset the gains. The interesting thing is if you "kill" the gimbal via the spectrum remote, as in the motors are not on, the setting remain as the head is still actually the motors are just disengaged. But if you actually power it off then the settings get reset. Which is why i mentioned having the tablet on standby. It almost sounds like you had it right the first time, then after the first reset and rush, with low gain setting it just couldn't support the weight. Id try to recreate the same situation under a controlled environment and see if you can get the same results
T That must have been it. Every time it went limp I would get a single rapid flashing LED so I would turn the handset and rig off then back on. Loosing my gain settings and the problem kept happening then...!!!! *bad words!!* I'm still a little worried about this battery issue. Any thoughts?
Christopher you should not be loosing settings once they have been 'written' to the MōVI system. If they are written they will not go away with removal of power.
Sam: Could you just describe the exact sequence you're using to write the parameters back to the Movi, please? Sorry to be a pain, but there is obviously something fundamental wrong (like you didn't figure that out ), but diagnosis-by-text is very hard to do without eliminating the obvious problems. The next step is going to be to deliberately disconnect and re-connect all of the connectors on the MoVI just to make sure nothing has worked loose and is causing the "go limp" issue. Andy.
I've always lost settings when powering down the rig. Used both the Mac software and the android software. I've also seen the same complaint in other forum threads where only in the windows software you can actually save settings to reapply later. Also I've seen the same thing happen on another MoVI that was a rental. Unless there's something I'm missing it's pretty consistent. Like I mentioned, when the motors are turned of via remote the settings hold. When the rig is powered off they are reset. If you're saying it shouldn't then what else could it be? I received my rig 2 months ago. That really has been the only annoying thing but the reset is fast enough so I'm not bothered by it. And it has never affected performance.
Christopher: Sorry to hear that you're having the same problem. I'm trying to reproduce the problem here with my Android 7" Nexus and I cannot get it to happen. Can you confirm the exact sequence of steps you're using please (e.g. what menu items you tap on) -- I'll try exactly the same thing and see what happens. Andy.
I balance, turn on the rig and it stabilizes. I apply pan tilt roll settings. It all holds.i apply majestic settings. Pan window pan smoothing, tilt window tilt smoothing. Then run and play. When I power down to change batteries on the camera or change a lens or whatever, then turn the rig back on it reconnects to the nexus 7 and all the parameters have been brought right back down to the default 10 gain 10 window etc. this does not happen however when I simply disengage the motors via the spectrum 8. But in that case the rig stays powered on. It's only when I power off that it resets. And like I said, seeing it on another rig I assumed this to be normal. I also had the same exact results when connecting to the Mac osx software, although I don't use that anymore as the nexus is so much more convenient!
Also to add it's not a power issue. Full batteries and I keep track of the batteries not attached to the rig with a voltage checker.