Hey everyone. We're in the middle of a commercial shoot and we've hit the dreaded 3 flashing lights of doom. We've been going through the rig twice and reset each cable as best as we can. To start we were registering an error on IMU, GPS, and DRIVE but after a few minutes of tinkering we're down to just the DRIVE FAIL. Anyone have any suggestions about what specifically that fail would be referring to? Also we don't have an android tablet but would love to reset the rig to factory settings. Anyone know of a hardware reset or a way of doing a factory reset with the computer app? Thanks so much, -Erin
Don't know of anyway without a PC or android. And you would still need one of them to set your gains after the reset.
Erin: It's just a shot in the dark, but are you holding the MōVI absolutely still when powering it up? Motion during power-up can cause a 3FLOD (3 flashing LEDs of death). Andy.
Sorry, I meant to say that I have the GUI on my mac laptop but am not sure where the reset options are in the menus. I've looked it up in the forums but can only find the video that shows how to do it with the android app, where they are all in the top right of the screen. The same drop down menu doesn't seem to be on the mac version of the app and I'm wondering if I'm missing something obvious.
Yes, we are keeping it still during power up. The motors start coming to life but after a few seconds they go lopsided and the flashing begins.
The lights stop flashing and go solid for a second as the motors start to put the camera in position but it's almost as if the motors give up and then the lights start again...
Ok, so everything seems to be happy, some desperate prodding of wires seems to have stabilized it. We think it may have been a twist in the tilt motor cable catching on the rig itself causing the motor to unbalance.
Just for future reference, I've been seeing a few of these type issues lately. Usually its a heavily loaded gimbal that is out of balance. The MoVI will turn on and stabilize but when you go to move it during a shot it will shut down. The motors are drawing so much power just to stabilize the imbalance that motion or an increased motion will require too much power and will shut down. You may also notice that the MoVI shuts down with 2/3 battery still showing in some cases. This can also be attributed to a balance issue where there is enough voltage initially to hold the imbalance but as the battery pack drains it reaches a point where there isn't enough voltage to overcome that imbalance. If your not balanced in the first place, your shots will not have the best stabilization regardless of whether or not it shuts down. As you've found out other simple issues could be causing the shutdown such as a wire catching during movement again, requiring the motors to deliver more force than they are capable of.
Brad: I was doing some testing yesterday....and it seems like the higher the voltage from the battery, the less likely it is that you can get the MōVI to go into Limp Noodle mode....that's why I was having a hard time reproducing it, because I was trying with a freshly charged LiPo. Could it be that as the voltage drops, the MōVI needs to pull more current to accomplish the same amount of work? The heat produced by this is proportional to the square of the current (not the voltage), thus, to provide the same amount of work, something in the MōVI is heating up more than with the higher voltage...until it reaches the point of thermal shutdown? Just a thought... Andy.
Question, does the Movi have a regulator to regulate the voltage coming from the Lipo so that the Movi always sees the same voltage, assuming the Lipo charge doesn't drop down too far? Wayne
I don't have any insider (literal or metaphoric) knowledge of the MōVI, Wayne, but it seems a reasonable inference that it must have a regulator otherwise the integrated circuits would have to run at LiPo voltage. Andy.
Just a thought, I´ve seen an interesting phenomenon with lipo batteries. When they are heavily used (like when flying), the voltage info read on the remote (only flying, folks - not on the MōVI) is lower than what you get when you land and use the battery checker. Maybe the same thing happens when a not perfectly balanced, heavily loaded MōVI draws more power than intended from the battery, The system might "think" it´s voltage is too low and shuts down to safe the LiPos?
Wolfgang: What you may be seeing is that the voltage under load bounces back up when you stop the motors and remove the load. For flight batteries, what I see is a voltage "sag" of about one volt when you first start the motors, and a voltage "bounce" of around the same value when you remove the load. Andy.