Camera Power Problems

[Denis Buhot]

Great post.
Something to watch out for, and a practical solution to fix it in the field.
Thanks!

well, not so practical, at least not very reliable... Powering the red in the field is already an issue, due to lack of a sleep function. What then if some in the load of spare batteries malfunction ! I have heard of that problem before in private mails. It looks serious...Any reaction from Red team ?

[Mark Toia]

I thought I was going mad!.. thank goodness someone else has been having this same problem.

It's a pain the arse alright.

We have been tightly rapping duck tape around the battery and mount not letting it wiggle or move to cause a shutdown. This has worked a treat. But still not preferred.

Still nothing that drastic for me to stop using RED though.

thanks guys.
Great thread.

[Tanner Stauss]

The good news is you can typically get by with a knife and a delicate hand. The bad news is you have to get by with a knife and a delicate hand. A 90 second boot time between power downs, AFTER you've gotten a battery to work, is more than a small nuisance. It may make some AD's homicidal.

And how!

Yes, I had the same problem of our camera powering down by itself from even a small bump on the mounted battery moving the camera while on sticks. Very annoying and bad for the camera.

P.S. Anybody when hot swapping batteries will be available?

[ericyoung]

... The problem became immediately obvious. The mounting pins, were not mating with the corresponding sockets on the battery. Close inspection of both elements turned up a mess on the positive battery sockets - on ALL batteries.

For some reason, still unknown, the plastic casing that is around the positive sockets on the batteries was being chewed up ... We were able to work through the problem by simply taking a knife and delicately scraping away the excess plastic from around the sockets...

Can you maybe get a drill of a slightly larger diameter and "countersink" the entry hole in the plastic around the socket just down as far as the start of the actual socket contact metal.

That way the plastic won't get chewed up and will tend to "guide" the pin into the socket.

Just a suggestion!

EDIT: Also if the pin board is unsupported at the front, perhaps it's possible to place something in the casing under the front edge to stop them being pushed down?

[Andrew M.]

Afton, what an excellent post. Thank you.
I just took close look, even took watch master magnifying glass and my batteries were showing final , just before messing up connectors support, stage.

Few more weeks and all would be messed up.

I see two problems.
One, the plastic used for batteries connector is soft, would be not a problem if pins that go inside the batteries holes would have traditional, post and 4 way split banana loading spring design. The one used in traditional radio banana plugs.
Someone had this idea and design this pins kind of oriental sword way.
Sharp edges and just two sided split of loading surfaces that do damage the plastic around the battery side holes. Harder plastic there will fix the problem.

For now the only way is to remove messed up plastic once it accumulates there and regularly check if the oriental style banana pins are not wobbling away indicating the broken bottom support board.

Afton, you saved me a lot of trouble.

[Damien Molineaux]

I had a similar problem of intermittent loss of power when the battery was barely touched. I got in contact with Red and received a new battery plate very rapidly, I haven't had any problems since, and we've had a number of shoots inludint two intensive one week (each) shoots. I'll examine closely my batteries when I get a chance to see how they are doing.

Cheers,
Damien

[Kristina Winn]

Not quite battery specific ... but power related -

Has anyone had the occurrence of bumping the actual connecter to the camera (even very lightly) and having that break power to the camera? I've noticed that with one of ours on occasion.

[jbeale]

@ AftonGrant: Thanks for posting this! Not only is it full of useful detail, but this is the best-illustrated bug report that I have seen, for any product. I hope the relevant folks at Red have taken note... I think they should hire you.

[camman]

hi!i work on redcam for abouth month and i also have that problems!we have 12 bateris and the half of them i have to clean allmost everyday!i allso see that on same bateries we have oxidation on + pin because there is some place betvin two pins(batteri and chargers)!we came on idea that we change a new pins(thay would be a full metal not like original)maybee that fix our problem!?any sugestions??
ps. sorry on my english

[AftonGrant]

I'm not a RED owner, so I cannot try or verify this solution. If I were, my first tactic would be to simply get rid of the RED battery mount and replace it with one direct from IDX. The V-lock battery system has proven itself reliable for years before the RED came out, which is why this is so strange. I'm obviously not familiar with the manufacturing process of both the batteries and the mounts, but somewhere in there, there is a tolerance that is not quite what it should be.

This is why I would start swapping out RED gear for the traditional gear that is known to work. Swap out, test. Swap out, test. That should quickly shake out the culprit. I realize this might ultimately mean modifying your gear, or finding some way to mount the battery as conveniently as the original RED mount does. To me, that would be a small price to pay to have this problem solved once and for all.