FeatheredFeet- does the Optic 25 work in an indoor?
None of the past or current Soloshot products work indoors or anywhere there is not sufficient GPS visibility
Edited to add: by “work” I mean track
No, none of them work indoors for tracking. You can still set up the camera in a corner and it will film stationarily like any other camera. I plan to use mine as such during the winter (when riding primarily indoors), and when the weather gets nice enough to ride outdoors, I can use the tracking feature.
The Pixio website mentions a Pixem, which uses an iphone or tablet to record. Anyone have experience with that? Pros/cons of a Pixem over a Pixeo?
So I had ordered a soloshot and finally gave up after waiting a year. Ordered the Pixio. I have about a 50% success rate and have no idea why.
When it works, it’s totally awesome. But it’s a PITA to set up (especially if you are holding your horse at the time … our arena is not near the barn, so either I’m running back and forth with the horse hanging out in the cross ties or I’m trying to hold the horse while he doesn’t knock everything over!).
If anyone can give me some tips on getting my Pixio to work more reliably, I’m all ears!!! LOVE it when it works!
I have an older tracker that works in my small indoor, but haven’t used it in years because it’s a pain to set up. Instead, I set up 2 cameras, one at each end, and edit out the off camera footage as I watch the video. It would be time consuming if I edited the entire video, but I get rid of all the warm up, walk work, and parts I don’t want to save first, and then there isn’t that much left to edit.
I set up my cameras first, then go saddle my horse, and then lead him in and turn the cameras on just before I get on.
I just ordered the Pixem It arrived last week. The becons and watch all charged up normally and had no issues but bummer the Robot itself did not seem to charge and thus turn on so after emailing back and forth with the customer service she sent me a return ticket so its back in the mail last Friday to be repaired or replaced. If it works like I hope it will be amazing.
My hope is to use it to do live streaming lessons with my trainer who is about to move away in a few months so trying to get it set up before she goes… If anyone else has the new Pixem I would love to hear how its working for you. I am not sure how useful the Pixem App will be it still seems like its not actually finished and all it can do is live stream directly to FB which is not what I want to do yikes or it also has a link to You Tube but again that’s not live.
So what I am actually hoping to get it to do is just follow me with my phone I am not as concerned about zooming in and out for the streaming but if the Pixem will track with the phone and I can call “Skype, Facetime, messenger, whatsap” my trainer she can see with the video and I am going to use airbuds for the audio. I have already tried the airbuds out and in the open space of our covered arena they worked like a champ I called my Mom and set my phone down in one corner and I walked and trotted my self all over the arena with no problems of her hearing me or me hearing her. Any ideas to help me would be amazingly appreciated. Fingers crossed.
I have an Optic 25 and have great success with it outdoors. It sets up quickly and easily, and has no given me any troubles at all. I ride in a 100 x 180 ring and set up my camera on the short side, and it does well. The focusing could be improved, but I haven’t run an update on it since the spring, as it works well and some folks were having their units crash after doing the updates.
This video is from this spring, quality has only improved. When you watch, make sure you tell youtube to show it to you in 1080p HD otherwise you’re getting the low quality version.
This video shows the quality well, as well as the focusing issues as you move closer and further, or if you accidentally let something get close to the camera in the foreground, like a fence post 
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I’ve been wondering if the Pixem would work this way. Please keep us updated when you get the new robot!
I can absolutely just stick the camera in the corner of the arena and record, but I could have done that part without spending all the extra $$$$ on the pixio.
For the folks who get this to work - is there a specific order of turning things on that seems to help? I generally turn on the beacons, then the camera (centering beacon 1 in the view finder), then turn on the Pixio, then the arm band, then turn on “record” with the cell phone app. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.
That’s how I do mine (except I’m not using the cell phone app) and I have probably a 95% success rate over the two years I’ve owned it. Here’s a link to a blog post I wrote about how I set mine up: https://www.cobjockey.com/2018/01/how-to-set-up-pixio.html
It seems to work better if I give it some time between turning the base on and turning the tracker on, which is why I go tack up at that point in the process.
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OK I’ll try pausing between turning on the base and turning on the tracker - good idea. Thanks!
My experience too, lol. Every time I think I’ve made every possible mistake, I find a new one to make. But the half the time it works is great! I also have a SoloShot3 25, which I got because I was very frustrated with the Pixio and it was springtime so I figured “winter bip can worry about indoor filming”. And the SoloShot is a lot more user friendly.
But now it’s time for me to turn my attention back to indoor filming, sigh. My current struggle is light/dark balance, which isn’t technically a Pixio problem, it’s just that since the camera isn’t manned, you don’t know half the arena is too dark to see until you are done and reviewing footage.
So to update my situation I got the Robot back and it charge normally and I set it up in my kitchen and it right away tract and seem to work great. So I over the last three days have taken it out to the barn and set it up in our arena all three days and I seem to be having some kind of technical difficulties because I can set it up get it going and I can walk around in the arena and it tracks and records me no problem right now that’s all I wanted to do I haven’t even gotten into the live streaming yet. But every time so far when I’ve used it riding I’ve had issues. So today I set it up and got on my horse make sure I was not too close and begin my warm up going back and looking at the video it tracked in work perfectly for about seven minutes. And then all the sudden it let me leave the screen and no longer tracked and then it just sat in one place and zoomed in and out. I halfway through the ride realized it wasn’t working properly so I we turned it off and then restarted it and restarting it didn’t help it was still just stuck in one place recording and zooming in and out and not panning side to side. So I just sent an email explaining that to customer service and even sent them a copy of the video to show what it has done. I don’t think I’m setting it up wrong I just don’t understand why it doesn’t just continue to track and work after 7 or 8 minutes of operating just fine. So we’ll see what I find out. I have the brand new Pixem and I’m using an IPhone with the app. If I can get it to work it was the possibility of being amazing. Here is the You time video on how to set it up.
