On set in the cold (-3C) last night we had the misfortune of having our Mimic shut down and completely lock up. At first we thought it was a battery issue but it seemed different as it would not even take an external charge or show charge light when placed in a warm vehicle for a half hour. Started looking through the forums and came across the “hard reset” posts. I removed the back and disconnected the internal Mimic battery for one minute as suggested and that worked the second time. Questions: -How often is this happening to others? -Why is it happening? -How can we avoid this? -Is Freefly addressing this? This is a nearly new unit! Our Mimic is now a critical datalink for of our FIZ control and sometimes Roll/Stop as well. I can’t have this system breaking down at critical times on set with 100 highly paid professionals standing around watching.
Question to the group - dos anyone from Freefly ever chime in on this stuff on the forums anymore?? It might be useful if they did.
Sorry to hear about the issue you're having. This forum is primarily intended for dialogue between Freefly's customers, not as a primary means of getting technical support from Freefly -- for that you need to open up a ticket with Freefly Support and the best way of doing that is to head over to https://freeflysystems.com/contact That said, when their workload permits, I do know that Freefly technical support will occasionally review some of the threads on the forum, but opening up a ticket really is the optimal way to get support. Andy Forensic Software & sUAV / Drone Analyst : Photographer : Videographer : Pilot (Portland, Oregon, USA): Trees=2, Ground=1, Props=11. The Ground Is The Limit™ ---------- Forensic Drone Analyst : Forensic sUAV Analyst : Forensic Unmanned Aircraft Analyst : Forensic Drone Expert
Yes, I opened a ticket and did get a nice , detailed response. Something that would probably be useful for others to see also... I find it unfortunate that this stuff does not get addressed directly by FF on the forums anymore. The ONLY thing that saved my bacon the other night when my Mimic crapped out in the middle of the night with no tech support available was searching the forums and finding a reference to the issue. As anyone who has used the internet to fix a snag knows, there is a lot of good info out there buried in among a lot of distraction and BS. IF I was searching for a problem in the future and there was a detailed post response by someone at Freefly that would certainly get my attention quickly, add credit to that particular solution and, perhaps get me out of the jam faster. For others who may come across this issue - here is what FF has to say about it in their email response (my original questions in BOLD): ----- How often is this happening to others? This has been reported to us on and off since the release of the MIMIC. It was more at first, and with improvements to firmware in the last year or so, the frequency of reports has gone down the point where we rarely get contacts about it (maybe one or two a month). From the reports that I've received, it rarely happens to a customer more than once, or twice, ever. Why is it happening? As was perhaps included in the information you read on the forum, occasionally the firmware glitches after powering the MIMIC down and needs to be reset by disconnecting the battery. This is only a pain in the ass because the battery is internal. If it was as simple as popping a v-lock off and back on, no one would contact us about it. How can we avoid this? Keep your firmware up to date. Give yourself a minute or two before you need to be actively pulling focus, to power every thing up. Don't power down the MIMIC in between shots if you need to be ready at a moments notice (I know that's how it goes sometimes). Have a backup MIMIC on hand. **MY EDIT - I WOULD ADD HERE TO HAVE A TORX KIT (T7 I BELIEVE) ON HAND SO THAT YOU CAN OPEN THE BACK OF THE MIMIC TO ACCESS THE BATTERY. WITHOUT THAT YOU DON'T STAND A CHANCE!** Is Freefly addressing this? This is a nearly new unit! Based on the hardware design, improvements made to firmware and the now very low frequency of the occurrence: we have exhausted options to completely eliminate it. It has nothing to do with the age of your hardware.
Thanks for that long detailed post, Tom. As you say, having this information on the forum will indeed help others. Cheers Andy Forensic Software & sUAV / Drone Analyst : Photographer : Videographer : Pilot (Portland, Oregon, USA): Trees=2, Ground=1, Props=11. The Ground Is The Limit™ ---------- Forensic Drone Analyst : Forensic sUAV Analyst : Forensic Unmanned Aircraft Analyst : Forensic Drone Expert
Agreed, and if it were posted to one of the Facebook groups, you'd never be able to find it again in the future. That's why I would prefer having discussions on this forum, because they're searchable and categorized, but unfortunately, the bulk of Movi discussions seem to be on Facebook instead. Nothing against Facebook, since it's convenient to see a bunch of things I'm following all in one place, but much of the Movi information out there is "crowdsourced" by people sharing their experiences about things that aren't covered in the User Guide. If someone posted something two months ago on Facebook, it's very hard to find it again.