Flying phone or magic wand

  • Tutorial
The most popular question people met: “Uncle, where are you going with a fishing rod in winter?”

The main advantage of the phone over the DSLR is that it is always there. Therefore, the winter tests of the 920th continue in flights at low altitudes and low speeds.
The short video presents several stories showing the capabilities of a flying phone. The idea will allow video enthusiasts to use similar techniques when creating their films using any phone model that has a good image stabilizer.
Plots are safe for people, but judging by the last frame, not for the phone.
For the purity of the experiment to check the stabilizer built into the phone, software image stabilizers were not used. The maximum camera distance from the operator is 6 meters.



Using a telephone, a person seeks to see the world from above. It became commonplace to attach a smartphone to a ball of helium and send it to the stratosphere. Beautiful, but this is an uncontrollable flight, and not everyone can part with their favorite so easily.
Interesting is flying at low altitudes. You can tie the phone to the drone. But the high price, the risk for people around and the flying camera, noise, the inability to get close to an interesting object make flying not real for everyone.

Light weight compared to the camcorder, the presence of optical stabilization and good image quality make it possible to “throw” the phone to new heights using an ordinary fishing rod.

The fishing rod allows you to use new points for shooting, look from where you did not look at the human eye and feel like Gulliver. The method is simple and accessible to every fisherman. Not fishermen have a reason to join this interesting activity and then say: “Here I caught such a frame!”

The requirements for the phone are the opposite of the wishes for the caught fish; it should be lightweight so that your hands get tired less.
It is desirable to have good image stabilization, since when moving on a long shoulder, significant fluctuations in the phone occur.

How it all started.
I accidentally found out that competitions on snowmobiles are planned tomorrow. Usually I used a DSLR, but this time I wanted to have a shooting point that no one had, and remembered a new phone with a good camera. I thought, why not make sure that this relatively lightweight phone that does not have optical zoom is positioned as close to the snowmobiles, or even above them!
The most suitable item for the extension cord is a telescopic fishing rod: 6 meters in my case. It has a small folded size, lightweight, durable and is designed for about such and even more weight fish.
How to combine fishing rod and phone? Time was running out.
The phone with an elastic band secured to a light aluminum strip remaining from a broken antenna. The bar had to be slightly deformed to shift the center of gravity.
The node turned out to be simple, reliable and allows you to instantly install the phone.

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How now to fix the bar on a fishing rod so that the phone easily and automatically, without any sensors and actuators takes a horizontal position?
It is proved that in our country the law of gravity worked long before its discovery by Newton, so you can safely apply this effect without any danger that someone’s patent will be violated.
A semicircular stub from the system unit came in handy. A screw was fixed on it - the axis of rotation. The fate of the phone depends on a wide washer having an outer diameter slightly smaller than the diameter of the hole in the bar.
To reduce squeaks and improve sliding, I screwed two small textolite washers onto the screw thread, at the same time they served as a gap limiter.
I fastened the plug to the third link of the telescopic fishing rod - the two upper links were very flexible and had to be removed inside ...

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Installation process: the phone is fixed to the strap, then the hole in the strap is passed through the washer on the plug - everything is quick and easy.
Fractions of a millimeter of diameter difference theoretically do not allow the bar with the phone to fall out of the mount.
The phone has a convenient button layout for this method of shooting. After attaching to the bar, the buttons are in the upper part, which protects them when the case touches the snow or soil.
As a camera holder, not a gun, but a fishing rod is used, so go ahead to the photo shoot!
The shooting picture is easy to imagine: an uncle sits next to the track in winter and casts a fishing rod over snowmobiles.

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Recall aviation terms: roll , yaw and pitch .
In most cases, the roll should be zero, otherwise comments will follow - your horizon is littered.
In the proposed design, the automatic stabilization of the roll is realized due to the displacement of the center of gravity relative to the point of suspension and centering of the phone on the platform. But automatic stabilization is difficult and even turns off at large pitch angles due to increased friction in the suspension unit.

This time I did not forget to remove the white auto balance, as happened last time (not flying time) with the dogs . The cloud mode was set, which corresponded to the actual weather.

Mistakes
1. To test the idea with a fishing rod, a dynamic sport was chosen where it is difficult to keep track of fast-moving riders on iron horses.
2. The shooting took place on a difficult terrain and as a result, a slight pitch error led to the disappearance of the object from the frame.
3. The two fishing rod links that were placed inward, held only in one place of contact, and with the slightest fluctuation of the fishing rod, they tapped on other links inside.
4. The attachment point was also noisy - the bar beat against the washer, despite the smallest possible gap for good friction.

These noises, reminiscent of the rattles of an oarlock on a boat, can be heard while flying the phone. Video from the flying phone 2:31 - 4:58 movie . The rest is a classic: a phone in hand and a SLR camera from 9:11 a.m. when the phone is warm in your pocket.



On the street it was minus 15 degrees. The phone apparently was very scared to fly in front of the pushing snowmobiles, so pretty quickly he said that the charge level was critical. I did not believe it, removed it from the mount and placed it on a warming closer to the body. He began to shoot at this time a reflex camera. Warming up, the phone continued to shoot until after 3 hours on the street its owner froze. After arriving home, the phone warmed up and showed that it was working for another 65%. Throwing away materials on a computer showed that the message about the critical charge was after 20 minutes of footage, but in total he shot 40 minutes of video. In the summer, you can safely count on 1.5 ... 2 hours of video shooting with high quality 1080 p.

After analyzing the video, two main problems emerged:
1. Noise in the fishing rod and the mounting mechanism.
2. The lack of ability to change the yaw angle of the phone.

Something needs to be changed.
We’ll leave the phone, without it in any way.
The bar too - the mount was easy and simple.
But the rest is replaceable.
The fishing rod can be used not telescopic, but not separable. You can not fishing rod, but any stick or pipe. Until I changed the fishing rod, I attached everything to the first flexible link.
As a fastening mechanism, we use a flexible and theoretically quiet rope cable.
Result: turning the camera (changing the yaw angle) is achieved by rotating the stick / fishing rod around the axis.

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Benefits.
1. New survey methods become simple: high-altitude circular surveys, overhead surveys, and approaching a distant object. Anyone can record from previously inaccessible points.
2. Low cost of the idea.
3. Efficiency of assembly. In extreme cases, you can take any suitable rod or stick and fasten the telephone with electrical tape. There will be no auto horizon, but this can then be corrected by a video editor.
4. The bar can be easily replaced with a regular ruler, a stretched elastic will not allow the phone to get lost.
5. Mounting the phone to the bracket can be used for normal - non-flying shooting with the phone from the hands. Then it will be easy to hold and body vibrations will decrease. As a result, a convenient and small handle for shooting will reduce the amount of vertical video.
6. If you attach the bar to a small platform, you get a great tripod for a cell phone.

Disadvantages.
1. The radius of action limited by the length of the fishing rod and therefore not fly into the stratosphere. But even at such a distance, you can find many uses for this solution - from filming various objects and events to reconnaissance.
2. It is not visible what you are shooting. One must have great imagination to imagine what the camera sees. It is advisable to organize the translation of the image on the screen by the operator. The characteristics of the phone allow you to do this.
3. Physical effort is required to move and hold the unit without shaking.
4. Sometimes the phone rings.

As a result of recent improvements, one drawback in the design of the mount was revealed - the inability to change the pitch angle, but in many shooting conditions you can do without it.
On the bottom of the strap, it is advisable to attach a small ledge so that the rubber certainly could not slip off during sudden fluctuations in the phone.
In “3D modeling” it will be something like this:
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Even the rope rope creaks a little, makes noise and transfers the rod’s strokes, which is sometimes heard on the video in the form of taps and aspirations.
While it is not possible to completely get rid of the vibrations of the phone on a rope suspension.
On the day of flights, the temperature was -17 degrees, the phone twice reported a critical battery level, after which it was placed in the inside pocket. As a result, it was possible to shoot 60 minutes of video, while a lot of material was revised along the way on the phone screen. After warming up at home, the charge level was 45 percent.
What you got as a result, you have already seen.
GOTO line 1.

Question.
Does anyone know an application for WP8 or will be able to write it, which will allow you to broadcast the image from the 920th camera to the screen of any phone nearby, via Wi-Fi or another channel? A similar technology is used in drones.

A successful version of the mount should provide the phone with minimal fluctuations, make it easy to change the yaw and pitch angles.
You can work on interesting story options:
- flying in the forest among the tops of trees and a little higher;
- shooting a traveling car front / side / under - it is convenient to use a car with an open top;
- well research;
- shooting animals with a low round-trip flight - they hang the bar with the phone on the rope and shoot without bending, from a height of a couple of centimeters above the surface;
- jump and flight from the roof;
- meetings and rallies of residents;
- Unusual shooting from a higher angle.

Well, are you ready for photo fishing?

Additions to the article.
Slightly modified the bar so as not to lose the phone.

An example of using the bar using improvised tools on the set when the subject is located at a short distance, for example: an interview where access is limited by colleagues.

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Handheld shooting. Offset due to the location of the buttons.

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Thus, the phone manufacturers can release a universal bar for photographers, which expands the scope of the device.

Design option.
In aviation, the most peep is the deflected thrust vector. The maneuverability of the aircraft improves significantly.
In this regard, and as a result of the discussion, the idea of ​​designing a video camera with the code name python, a boa constrictor or a crocodile was born - it crawls into any slot and devours video stories.
The basis is a rigid bar with a variable length.
A telephone with a good camera (or a small camera with optical zoom) is mounted at the far end of the boom.
Using a cable system or electronic control, the phone / camera can easily take on any position.
On the near side of the boom are controls for the position of the front camera and a small screen for controlling the captured image. The screen can be a cheap phone.
It is necessary to make a rod, controls and fasteners. Any technique can be used.
Maybe which manufacturer is interested?

PS
Continuation of work in the article " Flying Phone - 2. Steadicam for the phone "

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