Testing of Inertia Wheels - Add in Slide and Stops, and Looping!

Now that you have your wheels set up for basic connection, lets do something new.

If you are on the recommended versions of the eMotimo Spectrum ST4 firmware, you will have added capability of being able to:

Control Slide Motion with the Inertia Wheels from the Knobs

1. Connect your wheels, set the Inertia Wheels profile in the live menu of the spectrum.
2. On your wheels, go to Menu-->Dashboard-->Assign Knob Left 2 to be SlideJog.  Assign Button 1 to be Set1, Button 2 to be Set 2, Button 3 to be Loop, and Button 4 to be Clear.   If you don't see these options, you need to restart the eMotimo and/or reset the i/o port.  
   
3. Once selected, back out to the main screen
4. You will now see Slider Blue on the left knob options.  Center-press the Knob until its active (at the top and big). 
5. Now you have slide control on your spectrum ST4 connected to whatever slider is plugged into the M3 port.  Make note, this is Velocity control and jog rather than position control on the wheels for pan and tilt.  You are basically setting a positive or negative velocity for the slider.  Your options are from -100 to +100. with a deadzone of -1 to +1 ( so you can be a little less precise when bringing the rig to a stop.

Watch out, there are no auto stops - your slider will hit the ends at this point until you add stops!

If you have set up your Dashboard per the instructions, you will see the left most button reads Set 1, and the second button read Set 2.  These are for setting up the stops on the slider.  When you slide with a negative velocity, slide to the most "negative" point  you want on the slider.  Stop the slider by moving the Knob1 to zero.  Hit Set 1 button.  Then move the Slider to a positive value and stop it when you have reached the point where you want to set the other stop.  Hit Set 2.

Now you should be able to use the dial to move within these bounds without going over.  Once you hit the programmed, end in Live mode, the units will stop, and the Slider display will be updated to be 0.

If you don't like a stop position, hit, button 4, Clear and both stops will be removed.  Watch out, you need to set both stops so Looping mode knows where to go!

Looping

Once you have set both stops and have tested that they are in the right spot in Live mode, start a live mode and adjust the speed using the Slide Jog wheel. When you are moving in the direction and speed you want, hit Button 3, Loop.  The status screen will update to ST4 Looping, and the Button 3 will change to say Live.  

When looping, the ST4 will move until it approaches your Set 1 or Set 2 point, slows to a stop over 1 second, then reverses direction to head back the other way.  When is reverses, it sets the Slider value to be opposite of what is was.  For example, if you Slider speed was 23 moving from left to right and it hits is Set 2 point, the rig will come to a stop, then accelerate up to speed of -23. 

The Slider values are still be directional!  This means, that even when looping you can reverse directions by just turning the Left Dial.  It also means that if you are looping and trying to slow or speed up a move DURING an auto direction change, it might not do what you think until you understand how the values work a bit more.   

When you want to get back to Live mode, hit the Live Button (Button 3).  The rig will come to a stop and set the Slider Value to 0.

Known Behavior and issue:

1) Issue - the first time a button is pressed, it will not register as a button press. Hit it twice the first time you start up your wheels - should be resolved in the future and is listed as a bug.

2) Buttons 1-4 register on the release of the button, not the press.  This behavior will not change and is due to how the Inertia Wheels are designed. 

3) Focus Motor /Jog on the M4 motor port is not currently supported - we will get this working well after we figure out a virtual stop calibration screen for this axis.

Questions:

1. Is the slide motion intuitive and giving you good speed control?
2. Would you ever want that on the right wheel?  You can try that too?
3. What kind of shots does this enable for you?