Cob Jockey

I thought I'd do a blog post on how to set the Pixio up, in case anyone was curious or was thinking about getting one.  This is not a comparison post on the Soloshot vs. the Pixio, although I will point out that setting up the Soloshot is much different because it runs on GPS as opposed to the Pixio's beacons.

Step 1: Set out the main tripod with the camera and Pixio body on it.  Don't turn anything on.

The green light shown would normally not be on here, but I failed to take a picture of it off.

Step 2: Set out the three beacons in the corners of the arena and turn them on.  They are numbered and must be placed where the camera expects them to be: 2 goes to the "left" of the tripod, 1 goes straight across from it diagonally, and 3 goes to the "right" of it.

They're on little gorilla pods so they can wrap around the board fence of the outdoor or stand on the ledge of the indoor.

Numbered so you can't screw it up!  I'm lifting the rubber cap that's normally over the charging port here.

Step 3: Turn the camera on (not the base, leave that off for now).  Zoom into beacon #1 as far as you can. 

Shown zoomed in on beacon #1.  You're supposed to center it but I'm always lazy about it and my videos still turn out centered anyway.

Step 4: Turn the base on.  The first thing it will do is automatically zoom the camera out.  It's now calibrated.  Now if you're me, here's where you go tack up your horse.  The arena looks like this with all the little green lights in the corners:

Yes, Connor has spooked at the green lights.  I know you're shocked.

Step 5: I usually do this while holding the tacked up Connor.  Stand in front of the tripod and turn on the tracker by pressing the button once.  The green flashing light on the front of the base will sync up with the light on the tracker and it will begin following you, but not recording. 

Press the button on the tracker one more time to start recording (And you'll press it again to stop recording when finished).  When it's started recording, you'll hear the camera beep and see the light on the front of the body and tracker both go solid green.  I like this, because I can pause recording from the saddle if part of my ride is not worth filming, like someone comes in to talk to me.

The tracker can be worn on your wrist with included straps, or put in a pocket.

It sounds complicated when I write it out like that, but in reality, it takes so little time to set up (maybe 5 minutes) that I set it up for almost every ride, even when I'm crunched for time.  The longest part of the setup is walking one lap of the arena to set the beacons out. 

Couple other notes:
- The beacon, the body and the camera can all be plugged in if you need them to be (maybe for a clinic), but their batteries are good enough to do multiple lessons without an issue, so we never plug them in.

- The Sony Handycam records to standard microSD cards, so my trainer and I each have one (I actually have two) and we just pop ours in before we ride and pop it out to take home and upload afterward.

It honestly does a better job than most humans do at filming riders.

I need to do a proper review of it sometime, but hands down we could not be happier with it after a year of owning it.  Anyone else thinking about getting one in 2018?