Unleashed still unusable with Sony A7iii

[Rotaluclac]

Hi Oliver and team,

I did one last attempt to get the Unleashed to work. I tried to test in the most reproducible way, so if you have an A7iii available, you can repeat my test steps.

Summary
Still no success.

Test system
- Sony A7iii, old-style menus, software version 4.01.
- Android, latest version.
- App version: the most recent version as of 14.12.2023.
- Unleashed firmware version: the most recent version as of 14.12.2023.

Here is what I did.

Get the camera in a well-defined state
1. Setup7 --> Settings Reset --> Camera Settings Reset
2. Setup7 --> Settings Reset --> Initialize
3. Network2 --> Reset Network Set.

The tips from your 'Getting started' page
4. Setup4 --> USB Power Supply: Off
5. Quality/Image Size1 --> File Format: RAW & JPEG
6. Setup4 --> USB Connection: PC Remote
7. Setup4 --> PC Remote Settings --> Still Img. Save Dest.: PC+Camera
8. Setup4 --> PC Remote Settings --> RAW+J PC Save Img: JPEG Only

Prepare for the test
9. Switch camera off.
10. Plug in Unleashed.
11. Switch camera on.
12. Start app on phone.

First test
Take a number of photos by pressing the button of the app.
Result: I can only trigger the camera about once every two seconds. Taking photos faster is not possible. I consider this too slow.
After four or five photos, the camera displays an error message, indicating that an error occurred while writing to the memory card. I am given the option to recover the data. That's what I select.
Now the connection between the app and the Unleashed is lost. I have to close the app and restart it in order to restore the connection.
Conclusion: Test failed.

Second test
Take a number of photos by pressing the button of the app.
Result: Now, there's about 1.5 seconds between photos. A bit faster than in the first test, but still too slow.
After the fourth photo is taken, the camera completely freezes. None of the camera's buttons work.
I have to switch the camera off and on to recover from this problem.
Now the camera works, but the connection between the app and the Unleashed is lost. I have to close the app and restart it in order to restore the connection.
Conclusion: Test failed.

Third test
Take a number of photos by pressing the button of the app.
After the third photo, the Unleashed resets. This takes quite a long time.
When the Unleashed is active again, the camera displays an error message, indicating that an error occurred while writing to the memory card. I am given the option to recover the data. That's what I select.
Conclusion: Test failed.

Conclusions
- All three tests failed.
- The Unleashed does not work as advertised. The system is so unreliable that it is, in fact, unusable.

I unplugged the Unleashed from my camera, and I uninstalled the app.

My questions to you
a) Is there anything I can do to make the system work? I hope you can give me helpful tips. Hopefully you can replay my test in your lab and see if similar things happen.
b) I consider this as my last attempt to improve things. If no improvement can be expected, I'd like to receive a refund.

Regards,
Erick
   

[kirkkeyes]

Nice writeup. I have an A7III. I'll try your testing and see how it goes on mine.

[jonsadrgilany]

Hi Oliver and team,

I did one last attempt to get the Unleashed to work. I tried to test in the most reproducible way, so if you have an A7iii available, you can repeat my test steps.

Summary
Still no success.

Test system
- Sony A7iii, old-style menus, software version 4.01.
- Android, latest version.
- App version: the most recent version as of 14.12.2023.
- Unleashed firmware version: the most recent version as of 14.12.2023.

Here is what I did.

Get the camera in a well-defined state
1. Setup7 --> Settings Reset --> Camera Settings Reset
2. Setup7 --> Settings Reset --> Initialize
3. Network2 --> Reset Network Set.

The tips from your 'Getting started' page
4. Setup4 --> USB Power Supply: Off
5. Quality/Image Size1 --> File Format: RAW & JPEG
6. Setup4 --> USB Connection: PC Remote
7. Setup4 --> PC Remote Settings --> Still Img. Save Dest.: PC+Camera
8. Setup4 --> PC Remote Settings --> RAW+J PC Save Img: JPEG Only

Prepare for the test
9. Switch camera off.
10. Plug in Unleashed.
11. Switch camera on.
12. Start app on phone.

First test
Take a number of photos by pressing the button of the app.
Result: I can only trigger the camera about once every two seconds. Taking photos faster is not possible. I consider this too slow.
After four or five photos, the camera displays an error message, indicating that an error occurred while writing to the memory card. I am given the option to recover the data. That's what I select.
Now the connection between the app and the Unleashed is lost. I have to close the app and restart it in order to restore the connection.
Conclusion: Test failed.

Second test
Take a number of photos by pressing the button of the app.
Result: Now, there's about 1.5 seconds between photos. A bit faster than in the first test, but still too slow.
After the fourth photo is taken, the camera completely freezes. None of the camera's buttons work.
I have to switch the camera off and on to recover from this problem.
Now the camera works, but the connection between the app and the Unleashed is lost. I have to close the app and restart it in order to restore the connection.
Conclusion: Test failed.

Third test
Take a number of photos by pressing the button of the app.
After the third photo, the Unleashed resets. This takes quite a long time.
When the Unleashed is active again, the camera displays an error message, indicating that an error occurred while writing to the memory card. I am given the option to recover the data. That's what I select.
Conclusion: Test failed.

Conclusions
- All three tests failed.
- The Unleashed does not work as advertised. The system is so unreliable that it is, in fact, unusable.

I unplugged the Unleashed from my camera, and I uninstalled the app.

My questions to you
a) Is there anything I can do to make the system work? I hope you can give me helpful tips. Hopefully you can replay my test in your lab and see if similar things happen.
b) I consider this as my last attempt to improve things. If no improvement can be expected, I'd like to receive a refund.

Regards,
Erick
   

Any idea of what our options are here if we continue to be ignored? I'm having the same experience, and clearly, the Unleashed team is not working in good faith. They are still selling these defective products on their website.

[Rotaluclac]

   
I had two reasons for my extensive test.

One reason was for myself: to be sure that I did everything in my power, to be sure that the device's lack of usability was not my fault.

The more important reason was to allow the Foolography team to repeat my test and see if they arrive at the same results - and, if so, correct the problem through a firmware update, or an app update.

I hope to hear from the team. They're quite silent, I must say, which doesn't feel right.

Oh, and kirkkeyes, if you have any test results, please let us know!

Regards,
Erick
   

[Rotaluclac]

   
@Team, please do not remain silent.

Have you been able to reproduce my tests?
If so, what's your outlook on repairing the issues?
If not, is my device defective and should I apply for a replacement?

Or did I miss an essential step? If so, which one?

Please react.
In whichever way.

Erick
   

[Oliver]

Hi Rotaluclac,

First of all, sorry for the late reply. It's been a very busy month, but I'm doing my best to catch up with everyone before the Christmas break!

We just released a new Firmware version: A3.2.0 B3.2.0
We were not able to reproduce your issues, but we did scour through our implementation and did find a bug that definitely affected Sony triggering - especially breaking Timelapse triggering when Autofocus was on. But it might well have had a negative effect elsewhere.

Thank you for your nice and long writeup of your test!
However, I'm not sure how you were testing: you write that you were able to trigger every 2 seconds or every 3 seconds - but did you tap the trigger 20 times in between? This would be very important to know. In fact, we had fixed an issue for exactly that in the previous firmware update A3.1.4

If the current firmware does not fix all your issues (I hope it does)

Could you try with the most unproblematic settings, then move onto the ones you had above?

- Camera set to only JPG with only one, fast memory card in the camera. This eliminates the possibility for some of the other settings to be wrong.
- Now test if you can trigger repeatedly, but slowly (once every 5 seconds), without causing any trouble. take at least 20-30 photos maybe even more, and watch the top left corner of your camera's screen where there's an indicator of the camera's buffer being written onto the memory card. At some point, this should stop its animation.
- If that works, speed up your triggering, and observe what's going on.
- if that still works, try really spamming the trigger on the app, and hopefully that'll still be safe.
- if only jpg works, move on to raw, just so that you can see how bad it gets (you can expect the Unleashed to restart USB, and not being able to trigger for up to 10 seconds)
- now set it to RAW+JPG, and be sure, very sure to set these two settings correctly:
- Set the camera setting: MENU > Setup4 > USB Remote Settings > Still Img. Save Dest. = PC+Camera
- Set the camera setting: MENU > Setup4 > USB Remote Settings > RAW+J PC Save Img = JPEG Only
- Turn off your camera, wait a few seconds, then turn it on again. (most cameras only save their settings, such as the two above, but also aperture, shutterspeed, etc) when you turn off the camera. This means that if the camera crashes, or you simply unplug the camera battery, all the settings since the last proper shut-off will be lost. So you can be 100% sure that you set those settings correctly (and be right) but the camera might have forgotten them after a crash or powerless.
- now try triggering repeatedly, but slowly (once every 5s) as you did with the jpg only
- then a bit quicker, then again, spamming the trigger button.


I hope you don't need to, at all, but if you do run into problems again, If you can, please take a video of your test, where we can see:
- the app (especially the trigger button), the led of the Unleashed, and the display of the camera, especially the top left corner.
That would really help in finding the cause of the problem, or at least give us some pointers where we should look.

Happy Holidays!