Flying phone or wand

The most popular question of oncoming people: "Uncle, where are you in the winter with a fishing rod?"

The main advantage of the phone over the SLR is that it is always there. Therefore, winter testing 920th continues in flights at low altitudes and low speeds.
The short video features several scenes showing the capabilities of a flying phone. The idea will allow fans of video 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 test the stabilizer built into the phone, software image stabilizers were not used. The maximum distance of the camera from the operator is 6 meters.



With the help of the phone, a person seeks to see the world from a height. It has become commonplace to tie a smartphone to a ball with helium and send it to the stratosphere. Beautiful, but this is an uncontrolled flight, and not everyone can so easily part with their pet.
Interesting is the flight at low altitudes. You can bind the phone to the drone. But the high price, the risk to the people around and the camera flying, the noise, the inability to get close to an interesting object make the flight not real for everyone.
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A small weight compared to a video camera, the presence of optical stabilization and good image quality allow you to “throw” the phone to new heights with an ordinary fishing rod.

Fishing rod allows you to use new points for shooting, to look from there, from where did not look at the human eye and feel like Gulliver. The method is simple and accessible to every fisherman. Do not the fishermen have a reason to join this interesting lesson and then tell: “This is the frame I caught!”

Requirements for the telephone are opposite to the wishes for the caught fish; it must have a small weight in order to get less tired hands.
It is desirable to have a good image stabilization, since when moving on a long arm there are significant phone vibrations.

How it all began.
I accidentally found out that competitions on snowmobiles are scheduled tomorrow. Usually I used a DSLR, but this time I wanted to have a shooting point that no one else has, and remembered the new phone with a good camera. I thought, why not make this relatively light phone, with no optical zoom, as close as possible to the snowmobiles, or even above them!
The most suitable object for an extension cord is a telescopic fishing pole: 6 meters in my case. It has a small folded size, lightweight, durable, and is designed for approximately the same and even greater weight of the fish.
How to combine the bait and phone? Time was running out.
The phone with a rubber band secured to a light aluminum plate left over from a broken antenna. The bar had to be deformed a bit to shift the center of gravity.
The site turned out simple, reliable and allowed to instantly install the phone.



How now to fix the bar on the bait so that the phone easily and automatically, without any sensors and actuators took the horizontal position?
It has been proven that in our country the law of world wide work worked long before its discovery by Newton, so you can safely apply this effect without any danger in that someone's patent will be violated.
A semicircular plug from the system unit came in handy. It secured the screw - the axis of rotation. The fate of the phone depends on the wide washer having an outer diameter slightly smaller than the diameter of the hole in the bar.
In order to reduce squeaks and improve sliding, screwed on two small textolite washers on the screw threads, at the same time they served as a gap stop.
Cap stitched to the third link of the telescopic fishing rod - the two top links are very flexible and I had to remove them inside ...



The installation process: the phone is fixed on the bar, then the hole in the bar is passed through the washer on the plug - everything is quick and easy.
The proportions 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 good location for this type of shooting buttons. After mounting on the bar, the buttons are in the upper part, which protects them when the body touches snow or soil.
As a camera holder, not a shotgun, but a fishing rod is used, therefore - forward to the photo-fishing gear!
It’s easy to imagine a shooting picture: an uncle sits in the winter next to the track and throws his fishing pole over the snowmobiles.



Let us recall the aviation terms: roll , yaw and pitch .
The bank in most cases should be zero, otherwise comments will follow - your horizon is overwhelmed.
In the proposed design, the automatic stabilization of the roll is implemented by shifting the center of gravity relative to the suspension point and centering the phone on the platform. But the automatic stabilization becomes difficult and even turns off at large pitch angles due to an increase in friction in the suspension assembly.

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

Errors.
1. To test the idea with a fishing rod, a dynamic sport was chosen where it is difficult to keep track of the fast-moving riders on iron horses.
2. The shooting took place on a complex terrain and as a result a slight pitch error led to the disappearance of the object from the frame.
3. The two links of the fishing poles that were placed inside kept only in one place of contact and at the slightest hesitation of the fishing rods knocked on the inside of the other links.
4. The attachment point also made noise — the plank was hitting the puck, despite the minimum possible clearance for good friction.

These noises, reminiscent of rattling oarlocks on a boat, can be heard during phone flights. Video from a flying phone 2:31 - 4:58 film . The rest is a classic: a phone in hand and a SLR camera from 9:11 of the movie, when the phone warmed up in your pocket.



Outside it was minus 15 degrees. The phone apparently was very scared to fly in front of the pushing snowmobiles, so he quickly enough said that the charge level is critical. I did not believe it, removed it from the attachment and placed it on warming up closer to the body. Began to shoot at this time with a SLR. Warmed up, the phone continued shooting until after 3 hours of being on the street its owner froze. After arriving home, the phone warmed up and showed that it is still efficient by 65%. Throwing materials on the computer showed that the message about the critical charge was after 20 minutes of footage, and all he took 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 major problems emerged:
1. Noise in the fishing rod and the mechanism of attachment.
2. The inability to change the yaw angle of the phone.

It is necessary to change something.
Leave the phone, without it in any way.
The bar too - the mount was easy and simple.
But the rest is replaceable.
Fishing rod can be used not telescopic, but not folding. You can not a fishing rod, and any stick or tube. Until I changed the bait, I attached everything to the first flexible link.
As a fastening mechanism, we use a flexible and theoretically quiet rope rope.
Result: camera rotation (change of yaw angle) is achieved by rotating the stick / rod around the axis.



Benefits.
1. It becomes simple new methods of shooting: high-altitude circular reviews, shooting over your head, approaching a distant object. Anyone can record from previously inaccessible points.
2. Low price of realization of the idea.
3. Efficiency of assembly. In extreme cases, you can take any suitable rod or stick and fasten the phone 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, the stretched elastic will not allow the phone to be lost.
5. Mount the phone on the bar can be used for normal - non-flying shooting the phone with hands. Then it will be easy to keep and body oscillations will decrease. As a result, a convenient and small pen 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 the action is limited by the length of the fishing rod and therefore does not fly into the stratosphere. But even at such a distance one can find many uses for this solution - from the filming of various objects and events to intelligence.
2. I can not see what you are shooting. You have to have a lot of imagination to imagine what the camera sees. It is desirable to organize the broadcast image on the screen by the operator. Phone features allow you to do this.
3. It takes physical effort to move and hold the unit without shaking.
4. Sometimes on the phone ring.

As a result of recent improvements, one flaw in the fastening design was revealed - the inability to change the pitch angle, but in many shooting conditions one can do without it.
At the bottom of the strap, it is advisable to attach a small ledge so that the gum certainly could not come off with sharp vibrations of the phone.
In "3D modeling" it will be something like this:


Even the rope cable creaks a little, makes noise and passes the rods' blows, which is sometimes heard on the video in the form of taps and aspirations.
While it is not possible to completely get rid of phone vibrations on a rope hanger.
On the day of the flight, the temperature was -17 degrees, the phone twice reported a critical battery level, after which it was placed in an internal pocket. As a result, we managed to shoot 60 minutes of video, with a lot of material being reviewed on the phone screen. After warming up at home, the charge level was 45 percent.
What happened as a result, you have already seen.
GOTO line 1.

Question.
Does anyone know the application for WP8 or can 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? Similar technology is used in drones.

A successful version of the mount should provide the phone with minimal vibrations, making it easy to change the yaw and pitch angles.
You can work on interesting plot options:
- flying in the forest among the tops of the trees and a little higher;
- shooting a riding car in front / side / under - it is convenient to use an open top car;
- study of wells;
- shooting of animals with a low circular overshot - hang the bar with the phone on a rope and take pictures, without bending down, 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 the upper angles.

Are you ready for a photobug?

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

An example of using the bar with the use of available tools at the shooting when the object is located at a short distance, for example: an interview where access is restricted by colleagues.



Shooting with the hands. Offset relative to the center due to the location of the buttons.



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

Option design.
In aviation, the squeak is the deflected vector of thrust. Maneuverability characteristics of the aircraft improved significantly.
In this regard, and as a result of the discussion, the idea of ​​a video camera designation with the code name python, boa, or crocodile was born - it crawls into any slit and devours video clips.
Basis - rigid bar with variable length.
At the far end of the boom is a telephone with a good camera (or a small camera with an optical zoom).
With the help of a cable system or an electronic regulator, the telephone / camera can easily assume any position.
On the near side of the boom are the controls for the position of the front camera and a small screen to control the captured image. The screen can be a cheap phone.
It is necessary to make a bar, controls and fasteners. Technique can be used any.
Maybe some manufacturer will be interested?

PS
Continuation of work in the article " Flying telephone - 2. Stadikam for telephone "