Foolography Community

I got my Unleashed about two weeks ago. Pairing was easy and successful. The first shooting at a football game was o.k.
Yesterday I had my second shooting and my Unleashed N2 showed up some strange behavior:
* The date and time stamp was wrong (some days ahead in the future) - I noticed this only, after I copied the pictures to my Mac.
* Suddenly, the display of the camera was "dead". I tried a little bit around after the shooting and found out that,
- If the Unleashed is plugged to the camera, the back display of the camera goes off.
- if I unplug the Unleashed, the display is working again.
- I tried my old GPS module (Micnova) and everything is fine with the display.
- If I plug in the Unleashed again, the display goes off immediately.

Without display, you have no chance to go into the menu of the camera or to control pictures after shooting. So this behavior is not acceptable.
I don't know, if this is a firmware error or a hardware error of the module. My first suspicion goes towards a hardware problem, since the Unleashed worked fine for the first shooting a week ago and started to have problems in my yesterday's shooting.

Best regards
Ernst

Hi Ernst.

This seems to be a hardware issue. From what you describe, it sounds as if the Unleashed is constantly half-pressing the camera, can you confirm that? you should see something like [r21] in the top LCD of your camera - just as if you half-press the trigger yourself (with the Unleashed unplugged)

The question is why this happened... Since it worked in the beginning, I can't imagine how a manufacturing fault (eg a solder bridge) could cause such a problem a week later.

Unfortunately, the top of the Unleashed is quite open, to allow the usb cable to be plugged in. If anything metallic or otherwise conductive falls into the opening, it could cause a short-circuit, which could result in behaviour as you are seeing. you can try to hold the Unleashed upside down and blow some compressed air into the open socket, just in case something got inside. Let us know if that fixed the issue.

about the wrong timestamp: we just saw a similar issue 2 days ago, but haven't found the reason for it yet.
after 30 minutes of not receiving valid GPS data from the phone, the Unleashed should delete the last set of GPS data, along with the date and time. For some reason, I noticed on my Unleashed, that it was sending GPS data to the camera the next day, without having been connected to a smartphone for at least 12 hours. The position was the old one (more or less correct), but the date was one day in the future. We're investigating why this happens.

It seems like you have your camera set to set the Camera clock according to GPS time. Until we have fixed this issue, it's better if you turn that off again. In the cameras SETUP menu (wrench) under GPS, turn OFF "Use GPS to set camera clock". If that's on, whenever you turn on your camera, it waits for the first set of GPS data (which includes UTC date and time), and sets the camera clock according to that + the timezone you have set in your camera.
So if the Unleashed is sending the wrong date/time, your camera clock will be wrong too.

Do you use an iPhone or Android? THis could be both an app or a firmware issue, though at the moment it looks like a firmware issue.

I have an iPhone with newest IOS and use the iPhone-App.
I checked the USB port of the Unleashed and found no parts inside.

I did some additional tests with my Unleashed:
1. I tried it at my D7100 - also here, pairing was o.k. and everything seemed to work fine in the beginning. The green LED of the Unleashed blinked and indicated a successful pairing. But after some time, also the D7100 shows some strange behavior. Unleashed's LED doesn't blink any more and within the App, the only entry to select is the GPS entry. The Back-Display of this camera works as it should do.
2. I re-plugged to my D750 and initially it seemed o.k. again, but only half a minute later, the back display of the camera went off again. There is no LED light at the Unleashed in this case.
3. If the unleashed is plugged to the D750 and I turn on the camera, the autofocus assist illuminator is turned on and the zoom lens goes to infinity and back (this substantiates your suspion of a permanently half pressed trigger). Afterwards I see the Unleashed "Paired" in the App, but only the GPS entry is active within the App. No LED light at the Unleashed visible.

Maybe there is a problem with a capacitor on the module. When the module was unplugged for a day or more, it seemed to be o.k. again in the beginning, but failed soon afterwards again.
In my past, I encountered a very strange behaviour of a hardware board. The cause was a soldering error, which resulted in bad/no contact as soon as the board heated up. After initial start of the system, it worked fine for a while, but after 15 to 20 minutes, it strarted to generate strange and unpredictable errors. We made a lot of efforts to test and debug the software, but in the end it was a problem with the hardware.

Best regards
Ernst

I tried again and it seems, that there is a loose contact. The shoulder display of the D750 is toggling between a lot of different states after switching the camera to „on“ or pluggin in the module. There is no defined state of the Camera/Unleashed combination. Today the Camera Display was o.k.
The only thing which is reliable, is that after a while the only option available in the App is the GPS option and the Unleashed LED is off.

Best regards
Ernst

ich schließe mich diesem issue an.
D750 / N2 ... ab dem moment, wo N2 fest sitzt, ist liveview auf dem hauptdisplay ausgeschaltet und kann auch nicht mit dem entsprechenden hardwarebutton wieder aktivert werden.
allerdings:
das menü wird sehr wohl displayed!
gruß aus wien!

Saxi, I don't think this is what Ernst means.

However:

Live-view on the camera is only possible when:
A) The app is in the background
B) A video is recording on newer cameras - including the D750
C) the USB cable is NOT plugged in.

i.e. only if USB is plugged in, the app is open and actively being used (screen is on), and you're not recording video, Liveview on the camera wont work.
This is because Nikon does not allow Live-view while USB communication is active. Playback, Menu, etc should all work.

I don't think, that something had fallen into the open interface for the USB plug. I tried to clean this by air, but no effect.
I don't use live view nor video - only the normal photo mode.

D750:
The shoulder display of the camera says in the right lower corner after the module is plugged in: [r 10] - that means, that the trigger is half pressed, as already assumed by Oliver.
If I plug the Unleashed into the camera after a while, it takes some time to come to this state - but finally after some flickering, it comes to this "final" state. The Unleashed LED is off, the IOS App shows only the GPS option and the shoulder display shows [r 10] . If I connect the USB cable, the App shows all possible options, but the camera is still in half triggered mode.

D7100:
The camera seems not to be in the half triggered mode, I can take pictures as usual. If I press the trigger half, it shows in the shoulder display [r 05] - so this seems to work properly. The App also shows as only option the GPS option and also the Unleashed LED is off.
If I plug in the USB cable, initially is blinking green. If I start the App, the green light goes off, but the App shows all available options.

Please suggest a way to go on, e.g. replace the module

Best regards
Ernst

Since I got no reply to my last posting until now, I'd like to ask about the next steps. The module seems to be defective.
Please make a proposal how to go on.

Best regards
Ernst

Hi Ernst,

as it looks like something is going on with Unleashed, we will send you a new Unleashed. Please write us an email to support@foolography.com so we can discuss further details.

Greetings from Berlin
Ken