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Lost Connection Issues for Movi M5 near a LA train station.

Discussion in 'MōVI M5' started by Anthony Liu, Feb 13, 2018.

  1. Anthony Liu

    Anthony Liu New Member

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    Hi all!

    An honor to be a part of this forum. So I have recently finished shooting an impromptu/freestyle dance music video in Chinatown in the Los Angeles Area. The exact location if any of you guys know if you're from LA is N. Spring St. and W College St. where the Metro Station is located in the 2nd floor of a large building.

    Either way, I balanced and configured my gimbal with the app on my android phone and the first half of the shoot went smoothly. However, when me and my skeleton crew went into the train station where there is a high speed rail train coming in and out every 10-15 minutes , I lost my connection and had trouble reconnecting the movi m5 back to my phone. It has lost all of it's stiffness and even though I tried to reset my phone and reconnect, and then reset my movi and tried to reconnect and a variation of both in different orders, it still does not work. So then we got kicked out of the train station (no suprise) and we had to improvise and go into strip plazas in chinatown. It is at a lower altitude and away from the train station like 3-4 blocks away. After 30 minutes of doing the same thing I did as mentioned above it finally connected and we were in business!

    So basically, what happened that day, freaked me out and I totally do not want to experience anything like that ever again especially on a paid gig/ professional shoot. Does anybody have any ideas as to why my movi failed at the train station and why it took so long for it to operate normally even after we were away from the train station for 30 minutes? Could it be because the train's movement or structure created interference with the 2.4ghz band that this device operated on? Also, I didnt really pay attention as to whether it was a battery issue with my phone or the movi? but i dont think it is a battery issue... because I checked and i remember i had like 2 or 3 dots lit. Any feedback or ideas would be appreciated guys. Thanks!

    Best,
    Anthony
     
  2. Andy Johnson-Laird

    Andy Johnson-Laird Administrator
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    Hi Anthony:
    It's really hard to say what might have caused the problem -- your phone is (obviously) using radio frequencies to communicate with the MoVI, and who knows what radio frequency clutter might have been sizzling around in the train station. All it would take is some higher powered radio transmitter or noise source to "shout" louder than your phone and it would jam your phone's signal. The train station might have one or more WiFi nodes for the passengers. Or there may be other transmitters in the station used to communicate between the train dispatcher and the engineers on the trains. Even the tracks act as giant antennas and could be re-radiating some signal.

    I realize you might not be able to do this experiment but it would be really informative if you could do the test of having the phone/MoVI in contact with each other and then go back into the train station for a few minutes to see if the loss of signal re-occurs.

    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
     
  3. Ozkan Erden

    Ozkan Erden Distributor

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    As per my experience, Movi M5/M10/M15 is not shielded very well against electro magnetic fields. Whenever I fly under high voltage lines, Movi is the only component goes limp. I have no experience with Movi Pro under these conditions.

    On several occasions, we had so hard time to get the shot needed. Just FYI.
     
  4. Gary Haynes

    Gary Haynes Administrator
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    Lots of steel and iron in the tunnels, very high voltage on the rail lines, EMI from the contactors on the trains to the live rail and ground rail. Very much a mess from an electrical interference point of view. After you left the train station and saw that you were having problems did you turn everything off including the phone and then start the systems up again? Maybe some type of latency issue, like a cacheing issue on a computer???
     

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