Peter Hoare

Hi Thor, When you say a replacement motor, do you mean the inner drive motor? Do you know whats wrong with it? A lot of these motors fail because the potentiometer wears out, it could be that? I have only ever seen one M One that has an actual failed drive motor. If the drive motor inside has broken, thats a pretty terminal problem for the motor. If its the potentiometer, I can replace it. Alternatively, if you bought a second hand M-One with potentiometer problems, I can replace that pot for you and bring it back up to as new working condition. I have fixed many M-Ones over the years, I seem to be the go to guy for M-One problems now...!! Pete.

Yeah, I dislocated my knee when I was about 14 and its never been right since. I slipped over and it twisted out again when I was swimming at the Vdara in vegas after NAB, and now its just totally screwed Never a second goes by when my knee does not feel weird (it feels wrong as I type this). Im not an operator, but ive learnt, with knees in general, once they are seriously damaged, they are never the same again. Last thing you want is to totally screw your knee, you have a chance to avoid that now as Chris says...

Presumably this is going to crop in on your original image quite a bit isnt it, you would have to take your wobbly unstabilised shot really wide knowing that the stabiliser was going to crop in on just the middle of the frame.... Clever though

Hello Mih, How much current does this draw? How stiff a lens can it turn? How big is the gear that meshes with the lens?

The M-One has a very strong and well built gearbox, the only thing that ever seems to go wroing is the poentiometer, but the digital one dosn't have one of those. If there is a dodgy encoder, then if its the same manufacturer motor/encoder that we all use, then the encoder is part of the motor and cannot be removed or replaced. I could possibly order in another motor and encoder, but it wouldnt be quick or cheap, and the M One has a triangular spline coupling type thing, and so we would have to cut that shape onto the new motor shaft, which would not be too easy. All in all, I think a digital M One would be a pretty tough one to fix without acess to original parts. I can have a go though. Pete.

I took one apart years ago, probably about 7-8 years ago now, and I can't really remember a lot about it, other than at the time, I couldn't replace it. Quite a neat design really, might be able to do it now though. Pete.

We are making this roller for the Axis1 that will fit to a gimbal and you can roll the wheel with your finger to control the focus (or any other lens axis). There are buttons on there for run/stop of the camera (Arri RS/F55/Red/Lanc) as well as some other functions like limiting. We are just finishing it off now, it will be available in the next few months. Pete.

I don't know a lot about this exact story, but I can attest to Chris's manufacturing issues. As an equipment manufacturer in a similar arena to this, it is very easy for your entire best-made plan to just get wiped out in one swoop. I have been lucky, but there have been several times where there were distinct possibilities of huge problems that could have landed me in trouble like this, but I escaped. Developing something like this is not easy. Im not saying what has happened should be forgiven, but this is a difficult and very gutsy project to undertake, and these sorts of projects are delicate and can be wrecked with one minor thing. I feel sorry for Chris really. I can't speak for how customers were treated, but I do sympathise with his situation. Pete.

This kind of behaviour in digital systems (we call them runaways) is usually either encoder damage or some kind of wiring failure. If the encoder is broken, this will happen. If there is a wiring problem and the power to the encoder is faulty, or one of the signal lines is broken, the same will happen. We have an error handling system in the axis1 that detects a runaway and stops the motor turning to prevent lens damage. If there is an encoder or wiring failure, there is not much that can be done besides physically finding the problem and fixing it, but at least it prevents the motor speeding off and damaging any lenses. Pete.

I have to say, I did think it was chinese too. I saw it at BIRTV in China in August and it was there with a chinese company, and the sales reps with it at the time seemed to be the developers/manufacturers of the system. Pete.

The M-One is a strong and very substantially built motor. The torque of any system is not just the motor, the amount of current the motor driver can dish out is also an important part of torque, something to consider when thinking about motor torques.

I couldn't wait to see this follow focus at IBC, but sadly was told it would be at Cinec as it wasn't ready. A week later, I was at cinec and from what I could tell, the BT follow focus was not there. A shame, as I really wanted to see it, caus its one sexy mother of a follow focus, but there you go. Hope its all sorted out now, it looks excellent. Guess il see it at NAB. Pete.

We do a 19 to 15mm dogbone, but not a 15 to 15....

Yes, Dbus and PPM are the radio controlled hobby industry control systems. You would be able to buy any cheap RC plane controller and plug it in and do pan/tilt. PLC Electronics also makes a hand wheels box that plugs into a standard RC transmitter (which talks to the Dbus or PPM receiver) so you can control the ronin with hand wheels which is pretty neat. http://shop.plcelectronicsolutions.com/categories/VERACITY-CONTROL-WHEELS/?sort=pricedesc Pete.

I didn't see it anywhere. I don't think Ikan had anyone at the show this year. Maybe at cinec? Im good freinds with the ikan guys, they are usually at IBC, it was a shame to miss them this year.