touch screen dead HELP

[James Drake]

HELLLPPPP

on a huge shoot, touch LCD RANDOMLY decided not to work anymore. Naturally, we sent in our side handle for a repair last week so we have NO way to control the camera.

Stayed on Red phone support for HOURS, left a message...

Tried power cycling the camera, switching cables, everything. We cannot format cards....... ARG

Ideas thoughts!?!?!

v3.2.21 firmware Epic M

 

[James Drake]

is there any way to format redmags from the computer and have them ready to shoot in camera?

 

[Nick Grow]

James, please email the best phone number to contact you at right now to nick-dot-grow-at-red-dot-com and I will have one of our techs give you a call back immediately.

NICK

 

[Matt Ryan]

Did you accidentally lock the screen?

 

[James Drake]

hey Matt, screen is not locked. Strangely, the LCD will allow function for a few seconds when the camera first turns on, but then ceases to work shortly thereafter

 

[James Drake]

thanks for getting back to me guys, emailing now. feel free to delete this thread

 

[Simon Tams]

Not so fast... what happened?
What was the issue so others know beforehand.

 

[Ryan De Franco]

I had the enter key on the side handle die on me in the middle of a shoot. Similar frustration ensued. Red tech support was incredibly helpful--Chad got me a custom keymap within the hour, one of the user keys set to enter.

From what I've read in the past, broken Lemo cables tend to fry the port on the camera or the accessory... sometimes costing $$thousands to repair internal boards, not warranty covered... treat your cables like lenses and have a backup method to control the camera...

 

[Brent Carter]

James, sorry for the long hold time. We uncovered an issue with our phone system that our IT group is looking in to.

BC

 

[Marc Oberdorfer]

..
From what I've read in the past, broken Lemo cables tend to fry the port on the camera or the accessory... sometimes costing $$thousands to repair internal boards, not warranty covered... treat your cables like lenses and have a backup method to control the camera...

This sounds more than scary. Red should look into having some surge protection.... or.. hint to third party accessory manufacturers!

 

[Brent Carter]

Marc, there are a few threads on this subject if you want to search for them. Simply put, if a cable issue causes power to hit a pin port that is not for power, bad things happen.

BC

 

[Ryan De Franco]

Bingo! Brent, can you tell us how to avoid cable issues? I can guess the following might help

Store them in circles, move them gently when they're very cold, don't *$(@ing pinch them in pelican cases, properly release them from their socket, anything else? Am I completely off the mark?

When this has happened in the past, folks have mentioned a "cable checker" that could verify the cable's integrity. Is this a feasible option?

 

[Brent Carter]

A lot of best practices like checking for bent pins, slipped alignment on the Lemo sleeve, cracked or separated bend reliefs....

BC

 

[James Drake]

Hey Simon,

Well... we actually don't know for sure what the issue was. The symptoms were... start the camera, have functionality for about 20-30 seconds, then the LCD (and other buttons on the camera including on side SSD module) would cease to respond, except for the power/record button the Epic brain. We would have to power cycle the camera several times to get our 20-30 seconds of usability back, which wasn't really enough to do what we needed to on this shoot. LUCKILY it was all PL glass.

I've sent in a log to see what they can uncover in the camera, but for now we've upgraded to the new BETA firmware and are hoping for the best. After trying to recreate the issue, we couldn't, though it's going out on a 7 day shoot early tomorrow so we'll see!

Felipe over at support was very helpful and mentioned that if you turn the camera off, then hold the power/rec button on the brain for 20 seconds, the camera resets to default factory settings for that firmware. Good to know for the future.