Hi guys, We took Blackjack out for a spin on the first shoot of the year yesterday. We were shooting with an FS7, which is bit of a pain to balance but we always get there in the end. The rig was very well balanced according to the Movi Pro reading and by eye, so I really don't think the motors were working overtime. Shoot went well for the most part. The one issue we faced was after a battery change - we swapped over to freshly charged batteries and faced a steady decline of power within about 5 minutes. We rebooted the Movi and it showed about 40% again on both cells, which gave us about a minute before it once again gradually dropped to critical and then dead. Hitting the battery level check button showed there were still two bars left on both batts. I wondered if this was something anyone else has experienced in this beta version (sorry if this has already been raised), or we have a problem with our rig/batteries. We didn't have this issue with the previous firmware update. Probably worth noting that all of the kit is official Freefly stuff, there's no third party incompatibility happening here. Anyway, thought I'd mention it before the official version is released. Cheers, Neil
I'm wondering if it's more of a battery problem, and the Blackjack update is coincidental. What you're describing has become a fairly common problem with Movi Pro batteries as they age. They'll seem to drop off a cliff at 40% charge, or won't last very long, or will die when the load is increased to what was previously not a problem. When you charge your batteries, after the light turns green on the charger, does it occasionally flash to red? That means the cells are balancing in the charger, and if you remove the batteries from the charger during this phase, they can be damaged. Unfortunately, when you're on set and only have so many batteries and chargers, this can be a problem. Also, they will lose their capacity if you leave them stored at full charge for any length of time. Anyway, the symptoms you're describing sound like something I've seen with almost everyone's Movi batteries, long before Blackjack was released.
Hi Graham, Thanks for your input. It's interesting to hear battery life is a common issue. We've only had ours for about a year and a half and for batteries to die out that quickly is pretty shocking, given their price, if that's the case (we don't have it out of the kit room nearly as often as many of the folks on this forum, I'm sure). I never take the batteries off charge when they're in that stage - only solid green, so that rules that one out. However, we do tend to charge them overnight, so that could well be an issue. Now and then we've had a shoot on a Friday and another on the Monday, and left them to charge over the weekend. So, you could be on to something I suppose. How often have you had to replace your batteries?
I don't think charging overnight or over the weekend is an issue, and in fact, it's recommended by Freefly. Leaving them at full charge for longer than a week can be damaging, slowly. They're ideally stored at half-charge. Are all of your batteries suddenly behaving like this, or just a few? Blackjack says it's strengthened the motors by 50%, so maybe it draws more power than the old firmware, and maybe that's why you're seeing a decline in battery performance.
I don't think we've ever left them on charge for that long, to be absolutely honest. I could be wrong. We only have the four in total at the moment. Two of those experienced the loss of power yesterday, the other two (which had about 30% left when we took them off) went back on when the others died and seemed fine. I'll test them further over the next few days. Yes I noticed they'd strengthened the motors, so an increase in power consumption would make sense, but 5 minutes then dead can't be right. I'll look into the Ignite option. Thanks, Graham.
I didn’t update yet to blackjack and 2 of my batteries suddenly died yesterday at he same time. From 6 batteries now i have 4. I had that issue a year after I bought the movipro and the dealer here in Germany kindly replaced the two faulty batteries. So after 2 years working with the gimbal I lost 4 batteries. Always 2 at te same time. So I think it has nothing to do with the new firmware. I think the issue is on the Batteries or the chargers or the system. Does someone know if freefly is addressing the problem? I mean, I have to replace the batteries It does not matter how. The question is: should I invest on buying another 2 freefly batteries or should I jump on to a ignite&dji battery combo?
The Ignite Digi battery plates made such a difference to how much confidence I have in the Movi. I got the ones with Lemo outputs, and they made me a cable that goes from the battery plate down the gimbal to the Tilt cage, and gives me a D-Tap there. That gives me an extra port for accessories, such as Follow Focus MDR's, that can't be powered through the Movi's D-Taps because they draw too much power. Only thing is, your accessories must be able to take 24V, not 12V.