Tutorials

In today's video, we are going to talk about how you should use MECHA if, for some reasons, you need to use your camera with the handgrip down in portrait mode.
By default, it is supposed that the camera is oriented with the handgrip up in the level position, and MECHA performs all of the movements accordingly. 
By rotating the upper rail 180°, the handgrip will be down. Without informing MECHA about that, the upper rotator (or Rotator 2) works normally and, as a result, "up" seems to be "down", and "down" seems to be up.

Now, let's see how MECHA works and what's the difference when the handgrip is down and MECHA don't know it is down.

We are launching "Panorama TEST LEVEL", a preset consisting of 3 rows: 1 row at 0°, 1 at -45° , 1 at +45°, 1 nadir and 1 zenith shot.
The first row is the same in both cases,
but the second row is at a tilt of +45° with the handgrip down, not at -45°, as it should,
and the third row is at a tilt of -45°, not at +45°, as it should.
The nadir and zenith shots are also inverted, and all of these are important when exporting templates for PTGui, for example.

To get the same result in both cases, you need to inform MECHA to compensate for the 180° rotation of the upper rail when executing presets or performing rotations.

So connect your smartphone to MECHA's network and access the /config page. Find the "Inverted" option for the upper rotator (or Rotator 2) and check the checkbox next to it, then scroll to the bottom of the page and tap the Apply button.

With MECHA DAC, by default you connect your smartphone to MECHA-H, or lower MECHA. But you need to make this setting on the /config page of MECHA-V, or upper MECHA. To do that, access the /config page as usual, then scroll to the bottom of the page and find the "MECHA-V config" button. Tap this button to access the /config of MECHA-V, then, the same as for MECHA C2, find the "Inverted" option and check the checkbox next to it. Then scroll to the bottom of the page and tap the Apply button.

Let's go back to MECHA C2 and see how MECHA works when it knows it has to compensate for the 180° rotation of the upper rail.

As you will see, there are no differences this time.
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In short, there are two level positions:
1) the normal level position, which we call, simply, level,
2) and the level position with the upper rail rotated 180°.
If the camera handgrip is down, the upper rail being rotated, you need to check the "Inverted" checkbox on the /config page, for MECHA to know how to execute movements.