Remote follow focus for £150/$300

Nah, I wanna use XLR cables caus everyone has those already. I dont want to make people buy my cables, they can use all their spare mic cables. The good thing about XLRs is they have male and female ends so you can string them together quite easily....
 
Well I didn't really get much of that encoding the digital decoder signal interference plug mumbo jumbo :eek:

BUT I did see Marge and Lionel :)

Looking good hoarp-"the number 1 agent"-001 :thumbsup:
 
Hi,

The electronics are being done at the moment. i just got the gears and hubs from servocity and, predictably, they have sent me the wrong pitch gears. They took a week to even stick it in the post, you would have thought they would have atleast made the effort to check hey were sending me the right thing.

Il upload photos when I have them.

Thanks,

Pete.
 
hoarp001,

I'm definitely interested; can you add me to the reservation list? This unit will be perfect for remote focusing while the cam is on a crane/jib...

Question about the servo limiting feature; does it retain the settings on a power cycle or would you have to set them each time the unit is powered on? Also, is the power light an LED or a replaceable bulb?

Thanks!
 
Well at the moment, not very long. We are about to develop a little gadget that sits at the end of the cable so we can encode the signal so it wont get lost....
 
hoarp001 said:
One other feature that I am thinking I might add at this stage is a pause button. If you set your focal distance and you do not want to loose it (other than drawing a line on the marking disk) you can press the pause button. This will lock the servo at the current position and turning the knob wont do anything. When you press the button again it will revert back to normal mode and it will jump to wherever the knob is at that moment.

Are these updated and changes a good thing?
Click to expand...

That would be a nice feature. If I understand it correctly this 'pause' button could be used as a poor man's preset focus position.

- You set your lens at the first mark you need.
- Press pause.
- Turn the nob to the second mark you'll need.
- Then, when you need to 'rack-focus' to your second mark you press 'pause' again and the lens goes to the position the nob is in. (being your second mark)
 
doncamillo said:
If I understand it correctly this 'pause' button could be used as a poor man's preset focus position.
Click to expand...

If it's just this feature alone, then I'm not sure I see the point unless you add a variable speed control. The default speed at which the knob turns back might not be good enough for all situations. Even then I'm not sure that it's a necessarily feature.
 
Yeah, Im waiting whilst the guy that does my electronics finishes doing what hes doing so he can carry on with the PIC programing. Should be a month or so before we can get that sorted. In the meantime, im desperatly trying to work out how to get my servo to move the standard lens the whole way. becasue a servo only rotates 180 degrees max, so your average lens that moves 200+ degrees is often too long for the servo to move. i can move my Canon FD 28mm all the way with my servo system, but I cant move my 50mm anything more than 140 degrees, so I suspect the average lens would have to move too far for my servo to move. I am using the SGpro lens gears which are 126 teeth. You could extend the range of movement by using a lens gear with less teeth. Maybe the redrock...
 
hoarp001 said:
Yeah, Im waiting whilst the guy that does my electronics finishes doing what hes doing so he can carry on with the PIC programing. Should be a month or so before we can get that sorted. In the meantime, im desperatly trying to work out how to get my servo to move the standard lens the whole way. becasue a servo only rotates 180 degrees max, so your average lens that moves 200+ degrees is often too long for the servo to move. i can move my Canon FD 28mm all the way with my servo system, but I cant move my 50mm anything more than 140 degrees, so I suspect the average lens would have to move too far for my servo to move. I am using the SGpro lens gears which are 126 teeth. You could extend the range of movement by using a lens gear with less teeth. Maybe the redrock...
Click to expand...


Hi Hoarpe.. you need to remove the Potentiometer from the Servo, and replace it with TWO resistors that are equal to the Value of the pot. You will then get 360 degrees rotation.
I am working on a WIRELESS SYSTEM, that will be avaiable soon. Estimated cost, around £400.
I will be selling these soon. They will be made to order ONLY.
 
Hi,

That will give you 360 degree rotation but you will loose the positional ability of the servo. All you would get is the motor going in one direction over and over until you return the knob back to the middle. You would loose the ability to repeat marks if you did that.
 
Well you could...but there is a way to overcome this. You can imagine I'm not going to give away info that might affect my sales!!!

There is a way that the servo electronics "Knows" when it has turned 360 Degrees. It is actually very simple!!
 
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