pf Glass

pf Glass - Cinema lens position Monitoring system

pf Glass

As the In-House Engineer for peakfilm I have been working on several projects.. A complete Bluetooth control system for Blackmagic cinema camera systems a high resolution focus iris zoom position monitor device and a extremely accurate time-code unit all with a high resolution Amoled display.


Having spent a full year reverse engineering Tilta's wired communication protocol in turn building my own proprietary codebase (no SDK release document signed), I have designed a complete focus, aperture, zoom and aux control monitoring solution.. CAD design is finished and away for production run.


As always, Blackmagic Design openly publish their camera control protocol so the design of this module was way less challenging.


I have designed a Side-Car retrofit for the Nucleus M FIZ hand unit utilising the pfGlass modules and my proprietary protocol.

I also designed a replacement focus wheel and added a calibrated focus ring system built

into the pf focus control firmware.


pf Glass Tilta retrofit



pf Glass Tilta retrofit top




Independently fulfilled the Nucleus Nano ii 'update' that Tilta (to date) has not delivered. Rather like the Bluetooth update for the Nano 1.


I have already reverse engineered the serial protocol however, Just like Tilta's industry standard modified serial protocol the Zigbee modified RF protocol is also a bit of a challenge.

I expect the challenge to be met within the next couple of weeks after all, there a limited amount of ways you can programme an 'off the shelf' TI chip...


Update:

One Month later I have managed to decode Tilta's RF system by capturing packets transmitted freely over the air and built a receiver system to interface with my own proprietary codebase pfGlass system..


pf Glass rf module


Rear View - LED changes colour to the control in use.


I have finished the design of my receiver module to interface with the main pfGlass Board to enable full monitoring of Tilta's RF implementation.

The board is built around a good old UK ARM Cortex device with a US Texas Instruments RF device and is expected to meet or exceed Tilta's performance....


Added firmware uptates via my API.




The pfGlass Timepiece post 24 hour test.


pf glass Timepiece





pf Glass case


Custom built hardshell case per module/s