Moco/Hardware

Using the IOTA Controller with Arc

If you're using motors under 1.8 amps—you can work directly with our IOTA controller. Each IOTA Controller contains two stepper motor drivers. A small four axis rig can be run easily with two IOTA Controllers, with little extra wiring.

Using Arduino with Arc

The Arduino is an inexpensive hobby circuit board that is widely available. Load our DFMoco sketch onto it, do some basic wiring, and you have a step and direction signal generator for up to eight motors.

If you have a larger rig with dedicated drivers already in place, you can easily make a new step and direction cable straight from the Arduino Mega.

Alternatively, you could wire up the step and direction signals to a small stepper motor driver, such as the EasyDriver

Automate 3D Shooting

You can fully configure and automate your 3D shooting directly within Dragonframe's Arc motion control workspace. Connect our IOTA 3D Stereoscopic Slider or the Mark Roberts S3 Stereoscopic Stepper, then configure a special 3D axis within the Arc workspace. You can set interocular distances and shoot test stereo tests within minutes. You can even set multiple keyframes on each stereo position and animate the interocular distance over time.

Iota slider + iota controller

The IOTA is a high-precision linear slider for shooting 3D image pairs. The IOTA Controller is a two-channel stepper motor controller with DMX lighting automation and digital I/O. They are the ultimate solution for capturing 3D animation.

triggering other sliders

If you choose to use another slider, you can trigger it via Arduino with some fairly simple code.

If your slider is controlled by a stepper motor, you can use the IOTA Controller or Arduino DFMoco to control it through the Arc motion control workspace.

Shooting in 3D?

If you plan to shoot in 3D, make sure to check out IOTA, our new stereoscopic slider and controller designed by General Lift. It includes the same DMX and I/O functionality as the DDMX-S2.

Iota slider + iota controller

The IOTA is a high-precision linear slider for shooting 3D image pairs. The IOTA Controller is a two-channel stepper motor controller with DMX lighting automation and digital I/O. They are the ultimate solution for capturing 3D animation.

Shooting 3D Stop Motion Animation

The most common technique for 3D stereoscopic shooting of stop motion animation is to use one camera on a special left/right slider. For every frame of animation, the camera shoots one or more images for the left eye, moves into the right eye position, and shoots one or more images in that position.

Dragonframe's multiple exposure feature is a perfect way to set up left and right "sub-frames". This way, Dragonframe will shoot multiple images per frame. In addition, you can name the exposures to identify if they are left or right eye images, making it easy to work with the files in post-production.

IOTA 3D Slider + IOTA Controller BUNDLE

The IOTA is a high-precision linear slider for shooting 3D image pairs. The IOTA Controller is a two-channel stepper motor controller with DMX lighting automation and digital I/O. They are the ultimate solution for capturing 3D animation.

Control Lighting and External Devices

The IOTA Controller has all of the same DMX lighting control and digital I/O functionality as the DDMX-S2.

If you are shooting in stereo with the IOTA, you do not need the DDMX-S2.

Materials

The IOTA is fabricated from aircraft quality aluminum, 6061-T6 for durability and precision. All the bearings, rails and hardware are of the highest quality available to assure the filmmaker of accurate and consistent results for the most demanding productions.

Design Features

The IOTA design comes from the long history of a company and associates working in Stop Motion Production; from "Pee Wee's Playhouse", "Nightmare Before Christmas", "James and the Giant Peach", "Corpse Bride" and now "Coraline".

The Issue:

Many of the EOS cameras have a setting called “Exposure Simulation.” This setting is designed to ensure the Live View image brightness matches the actual photos shot. Unfortunately Canon drops the ball with non-digital lenses. The camera actually knows the current correct exposure, hence the ability for the light metering to be correct, but fails to communicate properly to the internal “Live View Exposure Preview Calculator.” Instead, the internal calculation is locked - based on the last digital lens attached to the camera.

The Solution:

The Live view correction cap is an EOS body cap with a chip that mimics many settings on a Canon digital lens. You place the cap on your EOS camera body and follow our directions to effectively “Zero” the frozen f-stop setting from the last digital lens used.

When you remove the cap the Exposure Simulation will be set correctly. The camera will stay zeroed and the internal Exposure Simulation Calculator will then work properly *until the next digital lens is connected to the camera.

Major studios are currently using the cap on their feature productions.

Stepper Motor Controller (DFMoco)

The DFMoco sketch turns an Arduino into a multi-axis motion control signal generator.

• Control up to four motors with an Uno or Duemilanove board.
• Control up to eight motors with a Mega or Mega 2560 board.

The DFRemote sketch is installed at:
[DF]/Resources/Arc Motion Control/DFMoco

Wiring the Arduino for Motion Control

An Arduino running the DFMoco sketch will generate step and direction signals for stepper motors.

If you already have stepper motor drivers, you can take these signals and wire them into a connector for those drivers.

If you do not have stepper motor drivers, and need to move relatively small stepper motors, you can wire the Arduino signals to an EasyDriver or comparable board. You will use one EasyDriver for each stepper motor.

The pin-out for each step and direction signal is described in the DFMoco sketch.