Hi, my name is Ed Bryce with cebmitry.com and welcome to Sunny Scottsdale.
Today we're going to be doing some more tests with the motor-mote, which is a two-axis motorized
system for time-lapse and also video, and we're going to try to be interfacing that
with a external enter volometer.
In this case it's the time-lapse plus, and we'll be working with the Canon 5D Mark III.
So I'm going to go ahead and get set up and we'll film this process together and see what
works and what doesn't.
Okay, we're getting the motor-mote set up.
A nice thing to do, one thing I've learned is that keeping this thing level is actually
pretty important, so using an app I find on like the iPhone, which is sort of a spirit
level.
I don't know if you can see that, but you're able to put it down, adjust your base, and
at least get your base pretty level.
There's another app here that I like to use just so I can check what time the sun is setting.
It's an app called Sunseeker, so it gives you a place, I don't know if you can see that,
if it's too blurry or what, but I basically know that the sun's going to set at about
6'11", and it's going to set basically right over here, and it's about 5'28", right
now, so maybe we have time to do a quick test-lapse and see what we can get going.
Okay, this is basically the time-lapse plus, it's an external enter volometer.
It's pretty similar to the promote control for those of you that are familiar with using
that, it's a project on Kickstarter, it's actually a pretty cool little device, I really
like it because it's low profile, lightweight, and what we'll try to do today is just get
a basic time-lapse going, there's a couple of things that we're going to be doing with
the camera, we're going to be interfacing through the USB port on the camera, so there's
an adapter that you can buy, and I'll put a link to that on the post here, it'll get
you from the time-lapse plus into the USB cable, I'm using the cable, it actually came
with the 5D Mark III, and then coming out of here is a 2.5mm stereo cable, this can
go into the auxiliary port for the Emotomo, and if we have time we'll actually try to
trigger the Emotomo also as a test through the PC sync cable on the 5D Mark III.
Okay so here's a good view, again you can see the time-lapse plus out to USB, there's
the USB cord, it comes right into the USB cable, I'm going to lift these flaps up a
little bit, it comes right into the USB cable, I've got my PC sync cord coming down to the,
let me focus this a little bit for you here, to the Emotomo, and that is, let me see if
I can get in here a little bit, let's try and get a focus there for you, okay the Emotomo
camera in, so this is the auxiliary in-out port, there's a slot for another motor, there's
camera right there, PC sync cord again, and USB coming into the camera from the time-lapse
plus, it appears that the PC sync out is not working on this setup, I thought it would,
we it was waiting and it kept now displaying a message waiting for trigger, so I'm going
to stop it and I'm going to try the auxiliary out port from the time-lapse plus, I've done
that before and that seemed to work, and we'll see if we can't get that going, okay you can
see that I have the auxiliary cable on, that's a 2.5mm stereo cable to 2.5mm in here, that's
now going into the auxiliary port, which is the IO port on the Emotomo, based on what
the screen's telling me, it's triggering down, it's in its ramp up, 20 frames have been fired,
so already we're getting some more positive feedback from the overall system, so it looks
like unless I have that PC port cable a little loose, I can try it on another test, it looks
like that it just doesn't work with the PC cable out, now the Emotomo instructions do
say PC cable out for time-lapse plus and the promote, but based on my experience in this
setup and configuration right here, it looks like that you've got to go auxiliary out of
the time-lapse plus and into the IO port of the Emotomo, alright it's getting pretty
dark, it's probably a little noisy here, but we're doing a bulb ramp now, we'll start
out there, we'll try to move somewhere over here and you can see we've got the Emotomo
going, it's doing a ramp up right now, we've got the time-lapse plus doing its bulb ramp
deal, I'll see if I can just get that off here, shake the camera a little bit, but you
probably won't be able to see that, but you can see it's in bulb ramp mode, it's triggering
the Emotomo and we shall see what happens, we have a little light sensor, there's a light
sensor right there, you see that and that is how this thing is going to get a sense
of light and dark using bulb and ISO, so it's always a little complex setup, I'm sure
I could have missed something, but we'll see what happens, this is how you learn with
this thing and we'll let you know, so I'll try to post what I was able to capture, this
is it, so this is Ed, CEB imagery.com, signing out from beautiful Scottsdale, Arizona on
Lone Mountain and it is Valentine's Day, so I don't think my wife is going to be very
happy with me, anyway thanks a lot, okay this is Ed, CEB imagery and I just wanted to do
you a quick follow on video, I'm out here on Black Mountain doing a laps with the Emotomo
and if you recall earlier in the video I said that I wasn't able to get any movement going
PC sync cable into the camera port and then I was talking to someone who's more knowledgeable
than I am and they said what you need to do with the PC sync cable is you've got to run
it, I'm going to try to get in here and see if I can show that to you, but you've got
to run it to the IO port and not the camera port and I was actually able to get movement
doing that, so it would appear that based on what the Emotomo instruction manual said
that definitely does work, so I just wanted to follow up this and let you know it was
definitely driving movement, so I have the time lapse plus going down to the Emotomo,
I've got the USB cable coming into the camera right on the side there, you can see it from
this angle and then I've got the PC sync cable, try to raise it you probably can't see it
because of the light and the PC sync cable was coming down into the IO port of the Emotomo
and I was able to get a full move just like it needed to and I was pretty happy with that,
so again from Black Mountain, sorry this is Black Mountain, it's the highest density population
of rattlesnakes anywhere in the US, hopefully they're mostly asleep now and signing off
from Arizona, take care, bye bye.
Okay, we're doing a test, I've been having a lot of trouble getting the Emotomo to move
vertically when driven by the time lapse plus and actually, let me sort of focus in on that
here and actually running the two and a half to two and a half cable from the time lapse plus
into the Emotomo auxiliary in out, so what I'm doing now is based on the success of the
test that I had yesterday with running the PC sync cable out of the camera, you can sort
of see that cable going around and running the PC sync into the auxiliary in out, I'm
going to try to do a bramp with the time lapse plus and have the PC sync cable telling the
Emotomo when to move and see if I can have some success at trying to get this thing going
vertical, trouble shooting it, the Emotomo moves fine vertically when it's having the
cable directly coming into its port and I've tested the time lapse plus and I know that
I can do a bramp with the two and a half cable going out of the time lapse plus out of that
port there and going into the auxiliary port in the Emotomo when it's mounted to a tripod,
so what I'm hoping is that it has something to do with the PC sync cable and that's what
the Emotomo needs and I can get a bramp going vertically here being driven by the time lapse
plus and successful going up the ramp to about there. Okay, the light's dropped, so we just
started the bramp here, I've got it in bulb mode, I've got the time lapse plus mounted
to the top, I'm running the time lapse USB into the camera USB, I've got a little bit
of a ramp in of about 24 frames here, I don't know if I can get a focus on you for that,
so it's counting down, we're going to do about a two and a half hour bramp here in this test
assuming that I can get some vertical movement after this ramp comes in, we've got PC sync
cable coming out of the cannon going into the auxiliary port, focus in on that for you
guys there, probably not the best and then we've got the auxiliary stepper motor, this
is a dynamic perception, I think it's a stage one Dolly, we've got the stepper motor right
there that's going into the auxiliary motor port and the Emotomo, the primary motor of
course drives the axis and we sort of got everything set up here, and sun's starting
to go down, so we'll see how that works, come back out, I don't know if I'll have enough
light to show you guys anything, but we'll see if we can get some movement in the next
20, 30 minutes or so, okay it's that again, last time I left he was last night and we
were doing a bramp and a vertical move given by the time lapse plus, unfortunately that
was not successful, I was even using the PC sync cable out to the Emotomo auxiliary
port and I just wasn't able to get a vertical lift going, I was able to get a vertical lift
going when I had everything set up normal, using the normal Canon cable out to the camera
in to the Emotomo and was able to do a vertical move just fine, I did have to change the power
setting for the auxiliary motor to make sure that it held tension during the lift, but
again was not successful and my only thought was that maybe the time lapse plus, based
on the power setting for the auxiliary engine somehow that sync or messaging just not getting
through, so I'm not an engineer by any means, I'm just trying to eliminate possible variables,
but what I'm going to do today is right now I'm just going through a normal test, I've
got the normal camera cable from the Canon 5D Mark III, let me see if I can get a focus
in there for you, there we go and just have that coming out of the cable there, it's just
going into the camera in, sort of move the camera a little bit this way, just going
to the camera in, just a normal move and so what I want to do with this test is I want
to try to see if I can get a ramp move going on a horizontal to see if it had anything
to do with the vertical position that I had, this is the dynamic perception stage one slider
here, so I'm just doing the baseline test right here and then we'll set up for a ramp
and while I get set up for that, I'm going to run last night's ramp even though it was
stationary, I'm going to run that for you, you can get another sense of a ramp move with
a time lapse plus, again I cut it short because it wasn't lifting, but you'll definitely get
a sense to see how the sort of the day tonight worked, so when we come back, we'll be set
up for another ramp test, this time going X to Y, thanks.
Okay, we just now started the ramp, we waited for the light to get to a point where it's
ready to go about one-tenth of a second, we're on F-2-8, we've got the time lapse plus driving
it for us and we've got the USB camera control going into the Canon, we've got PC sync port
coming out, going into the auxiliary IO port of the Imotomo, we've got our power cable,
we've got our AUX motor, our primary motor, everything sort of set up, we've set it for
about a two and a half hour ramp and we'll see if we can't get some movement with this,
again I'm on a static ramp time of about 50 frames, so we'll just sort of let that go
and we'll see what happens, I noticed that in yesterday's ramp, and you'll see it too
or you should have seen it, is that the Imotomo primary motor was still going through its
move, so it was really something to do with the Imotomo going into the auxiliary motor
and somehow telling it to move, it just wasn't going forward, but I know that the Imotomo
worked in a vertical move because I did a baseline test, I know it works in a horizontal
move here with the baseline test, so we know that the time lapse plus definitely works
on the tripod driving it and ramping it, so we'll see if we can get some movement going
here and hopefully if light permits I'll be back in a little bit, thanks.
Okay, and last bit of light that we have here, it looks like we are achieving some success,
I am detecting movement, of course I don't know if I have that SMS set properly here
but we'll find out soon enough tonight, but I have achieved movement, we've got the full
ramp going, it's driving the Imotomo, it is moving, and again the auxiliary motor was
set to shoot accuracy and of course the primary motor is set to shoot accuracy and last night's
test the primary was shoot accuracy and the auxiliary was programmed, now those are the
recommended settings for a vertical move, so it looks like we definitely have movement
going, so it looks like the only trouble that I've been able to see with this integration
of the time lapse plus, and the test that I've been running over the last week or so
is just vertical move, other than that looks like that it's working, again the only other
change that I've made here I should probably test at some point would be to see if I can
get the 2.5mm cable out of the time lapse plus driving the platform here, but I am using
the PC sync cable again, that's the recommended setting, well that doesn't work on the tripod
so I don't know that it would work here, but it looks like with the PC sync cable going
into the auxiliary port of the Imotomo and then the USB cable through USB camera in driving
the camera from the time lapse plus, we've got the light sensor on the time lapse plus
and of course the ramping program and we're getting a 3 axis move, so the only other thing
I could think that maybe I fouled up on was just not setting the intervals properly, we'll
see what happens when we process it, so as soon as this gets done about 2.5 hours from
now, we'll process it up and load it in the video, alright, so thanks a lot and again
if anyone has any tips or tricks, please share it in the comments and I just wanted to try
to get this integration working and see how far I could take it, thanks a lot and have
a good one wherever you may be.
Thank you for watching and I'll see you in the next one.
Bye bye.
