Hi All, Apologies if this is a slightly charged post! We should be shooting right now! We have more than 13 hours on our rig and most of that footage has been great. We are both well attuned to the balancing and tuning of the Movi and it has been great with a C300. We have produced a showreel - with no post stabilisation required and are pleased with it. We have done a number of handheld jobs which have been great, and a couple of flying jobs. Today on a flying job however, the Movi refused to play ball and we have no idea why. It was balanced perfectly and the numbers on the settings were the same as for other days with all the same equipment. Nothing had changed. We have the newest update which has also been fine for us. When flying we had huge vibration issues in tilt and roll as if the numbers were too high, however they were around the 30 mark and when they were reduced the stiffness was too poor. But the balance is perfect. Also the Movi looked up by itself a couple of times - NOT due to radio signal loss or anything, just a slow casual look up about 20 degrees. The ONLY thing that has changed since our last "perfect results fly" was that we tried to fly a Red Epic and had some troubles - vibration issues - big slow ones , but possibly due to motor gain settings, however we never got to the bottom of it as it wasn't our Red and the wind whipped up preventing flying. I don't know if the vibration from this day has done something but it really is the only thing that has happed to it. Our Movi gets treated more gently than a new born baby! Our settings for today: Initial: Pan: 95 Roll: 60 Tilt: 35 (This was perfect, absolutely!) We ended up on: Pan: 96 Roll: 30 Tilt: 40 (at times tilt went as low as 14 - roll was also very low at times and horizon hold was terrible) We do have some footage, which we can upload if people really want it, but it only shows what look like excessive stiffness settings in either roll or tilt or vague notchy footage when stiffness is not high enough. If anyone has some suggestions please put them forward as we really have no idea. We thought we were getting to know the gear, and even , dare I say it, felt a bit of confidence in it, but today it made us look like idiots. What's more, the sun came out as we were packing up - it was forecast showers (does NOT happen often in UK!) Please help! We have 2 more jobs next week! Many thanks for your time, Sam
Sam When you do the stiffness settings are you doing it while the MoVI is sitting on the ground or are you suspending the copter? It should be suspended to get the best results. Any chance that your copter is transmitting vibration through it's attachment to the MoVI? For clarity you have flown the same camera setup before with success?
Hi Gary, Thanks for your reply. Its our camera which we have flown with for the entire 13/14 hours. Everything is the same as it has been for the rest of the time. We suspend the copter when tuning or autotuning and results are close to when we do it manually - and our manual settings worked SO well! We have just come in from outside - we did a hovering autotune - which, while it was running, gave good results - and the numbers were quite acceptable, however when autotune was complete the results we not as good as during it! We had vibration in Pan and Roll and loss of horizon - even when just hovering and panning around. We are now going to lower each setting by 5 - one at a time and re test. Also I noted when in full gimbal mode with trims set to the middle it though the horizon was at one angle, then when I flicked it to fixed camera it thought horizon was at a different angle. This would not work on a spirit level!
Hi Gary, I wrote to you in a "conversation" thing on here... so hope you got it, and thank you Josh for your suggestions too... I think we have solved our problem... On the one hand its a tad embarrassing, on the other its a lesson learned and not really one I would have guessed either. I knew the numbers for the settings did not make sense given the amount of flying we have done, which initially made me think of software or the Red flight having caused a problem due to vibration. But it was not. We tightened every single bolt on the gimbal and copter without any difference. However we did not tighten the cam-locks that allow side to side adjustment of the camera - the camera was held perfectly firmly and they feel fragile so I purposefully do not do them up tight in case I snap one. However, the fact they were not very tight must have allowed some tiny vibration to the "magic box" under the camera as once tightened the problem completely disappeared. We flew every which way and results were fine again! If we had tightened them along with the other bolts we would never have known... but we would have completed a shoot... All experience I guess. Thank you both for your advice, and happy landings, Sam
Yeah, the slightest "play" in the mechanical linkage will cause this kind of problem as the MōVI control system has to be sooo sensitive. It's fascinating to me that the Autotune feature doesn't even appear to move the gimbal -- but the sensors can read what's going on. Andy.