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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

VFS Inclino, Imperio, Origo News ??

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Jeff Kilgroe said:
at about 0F and lower, that's when it starts becoming an issue to keep your LCD monitors and batteries from freezing.
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Wow, I knew monitors freeze but the LCDs freezing is new to me! What happens? and how do you protect for it?


Thanks for the info ;)

Cheers,
Rich
 
Jeff Kilgroe said:
... However, the RED One can't get sun baked like that anyway, so there will be some sort of shade implementation in those situations -- not real worried about it.
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Is the View Factor remote focus was planned to work only with the Red One?
I plan to work with it on other cameras too.
104˚F = 40˚C.
Many times we work in higher temperature and we are talking shade temperature, so don't leave it in the sun for too long.
Curt, lets finish this saga.
 
richcam1 said:
Wow, I knew monitors freeze but the LCDs freezing is new to me! What happens? and how do you protect for it?
Click to expand...

Liquid crystal does freeze and at what temperature will depend on the actual type of mixture being used, thickness, etc.. I once ordered a brand-new laptop from DELL, mid-January, it must have got loaded on the delivery truck and sat in freezing cold over a weekend. We had a real cold spell with night lows getting down around -20F. Laptop arrived, freezing to the touch, especially with it being inside that insulated styrofoam packing. I unpacked and allowed several hours for it to thaw out in the office. Upon powering it up, the screen had thousands of dead and stuck pixels all around the edges, mimicked the pattern of ice forming on a freezing window. Called DELL, they didn't believe me until I sent them pictures. They sent me a new system...

Anyway, story aside, I have not had the opportunity to use RED in extreme cold yet. I've had it down to 18F about a week ago for about 20 minutes, no trouble there. But no long exposure. It's been unseasonably warm here so far... With my HVX200s, about -4F was cold enough to cause the on-board LCDs to flicker and black out portions or even the entire display after exposed long enough. Batteries on the HVX200 would operate the camera all the way down to about -10F, provided they were kept un-frozen until snapped onto the camera. Once the camera was drawing power, the battery would generate enough heat to usually keep itself going at temps above -10F. When shooting at sub-zero temps with the HVX, heat-packs were a regularly used item. Batteries were stored in thermal bags (soft-sided coolers) with heat packs, kept in vehicles that would usually maintain a warmer temp inside if the sun was shining. I used an older Panasonic field monitor with my HVX most of the time anyway - it kept itself warm as it generated heat plus it had a protective cover that helped trap some of that heat.

Much of these same practices will be applied to the RED One as I take it out into much colder environs. I will this next week -- I have a shoot in the mountains and I'm expecting temps as cold as about -10F or so at the start of our shooting days. Keep the batteries warm, hot packs on hand for the back side of the RED LCD, I'm curious to see how the EVF holds up. I'll do some preliminary testing on it tomorrow and monday, but initial tests will be about 22~25F or so.
 
Curt - how do these findings correspond to your competitors?
 
As I understand it the View Factor remote focus system functions completely independently of the RED camera. It has been marketed to this group first but can be used with and camera system.
 
Jeff Kilgroe said:
Liquid crystal does freeze and at what temperature will depend on the actual type of mixture being used, thickness, etc.. I once ordered a brand-new laptop from DELL, mid-January, it must have got loaded on the delivery truck and sat in freezing cold over a weekend. We had a real cold spell with night lows getting down around -20F. Laptop arrived, freezing to the touch, especially with it being inside that insulated styrofoam packing. I unpacked and allowed several hours for it to thaw out in the office. Upon powering it up, the screen had thousands of dead and stuck pixels all around the edges, mimicked the pattern of ice forming on a freezing window. Called DELL, they didn't believe me until I sent them pictures. They sent me a new system...

Anyway, story aside, I have not had the opportunity to use RED in extreme cold yet. I've had it down to 18F about a week ago for about 20 minutes, no trouble there. But no long exposure. It's been unseasonably warm here so far... With my HVX200s, about -4F was cold enough to cause the on-board LCDs to flicker and black out portions or even the entire display after exposed long enough. Batteries on the HVX200 would operate the camera all the way down to about -10F, provided they were kept un-frozen until snapped onto the camera. Once the camera was drawing power, the battery would generate enough heat to usually keep itself going at temps above -10F. When shooting at sub-zero temps with the HVX, heat-packs were a regularly used item. Batteries were stored in thermal bags (soft-sided coolers) with heat packs, kept in vehicles that would usually maintain a warmer temp inside if the sun was shining. I used an older Panasonic field monitor with my HVX most of the time anyway - it kept itself warm as it generated heat plus it had a protective cover that helped trap some of that heat.

Much of these same practices will be applied to the RED One as I take it out into much colder environs. I will this next week -- I have a shoot in the mountains and I'm expecting temps as cold as about -10F or so at the start of our shooting days. Keep the batteries warm, hot packs on hand for the back side of the RED LCD, I'm curious to see how the EVF holds up. I'll do some preliminary testing on it tomorrow and monday, but initial tests will be about 22~25F or so.
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I learn something new here again! Thanks Jeff. (All this cold stuff is foreign to most of us So-Cal guys ;) )
 
Please, please, please Santa Curt. . . please send me my Impero and my Inclino. . .

Stephen
 
The first 16 motors are going to be fully assembled this afternoon with the exception of the thermal interface material... unfortunately thats arriving tomorrow as I was only able to get a hold of a sales person at chomerics just yesterday. The good news is that we are looking great from a thermal perspective... the current temperature range is -5C to 45C which should only get better in a real world situation. On another note, the noise issue is not nearly as significant as it used to be. At 5' I got a reading of 30dBa when doing a 45 degree move at 1/4 speed. Thats down from 50 dB on the first version of the motor with the 65:1 harmonic drives.

The final version of the Impero PCB will also be in today and we will get cranking on the assembly of the first 16 units. Luckily they go together very fast so I dont expect the Impero to be the gating factor in getting these out. I'll post more updates as the info comes in.

So its a no-go for today but we will have thermal interface material in the morning and we should be able to do tomorrow. Please be patient with us, we are going as fast as we can.
 
Dominic, the remainder of the orders will go pretty fast. As soon as we turn things on we expect to be doing at least 25 units per day. We're receiving 500 sets of parts next thursday at which point we should be able to start cranking these out.
 
Great news Curt, thanks for the update.

But I wonder what happens below -5C? Will the motors stop working? Or will they just lose some torque?

And what about the comparison to the competitor's motors you promised a while back? :sarcasm:
 
Below -5C is just not known, its as low as we could go with our chamber. I'm sure it would continue to work but we need to do more research. One thing to note is that the current draw starts climbing as the temperature decreases and current decreases as temperature increases. So if the motor is drawing 1A at room temperature then it might draw 0.5A at 100F and 1.5A at 32F. This is mainly due to the grease we are using for the harmonic drive... when it gets cold the viscosity decreases so the motor has to work harder to turn. Josh is trying to track down some grease that hass more consistency over wide temperature ranges but its tricky finding stuff that works well and doesn't cost $2k per 8 oz. tube.

If you are using a single motor package on the camera it is good to know about this current draw issue as you may want to get a DTAP cable if you are going to be running in low temperatures - the Red Camera aux port can only do 1.5A before it taps out.
 
CVB said:
Dominic, the remainder of the orders will go pretty fast. As soon as we turn things on we expect to be doing at least 25 units per day. We're receiving 500 sets of parts next thursday at which point we should be able to start cranking these out.
Click to expand...

Thanks Curt... I just double checked and I was wrong anyway, we're #27... so not QUITE as heartbreaking as before! :-)
 
Curt, if I order now (the Red motor kit) when do you guess you will be able to ship?
 
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