A 12V Block battery

[D Namir]

with all the power problems and battery plate mounting difficulties Red owners are facing, has anybody tried powering his/her camera from a "good old style" 12V block battery, like in the god old time of the motion picture cameras.
It needs a Red power cable with a 4 pins XLR at the other edge, I assume.

 

[Evin Grant]

Sure, it works fine but it's risky if the battery dies during a shot.

 

[D Namir]

Sure, it works fine but it's risky if the battery dies during a shot.

Isn't it the same like other battery dies during a shot?
Red batteries has the monitoring benefit of how much power is left, but other V-lock batteries don't (beside n the battery itself).
I am sure both methods of monitoring power can be applied to both other kind of batteries (block battery and other V-lock brand).

 

[Mike Prevette]

You will find that old school SLA (sealed lead acid) battery blocks will not give you very satisfying results on a high wattage digital camera like the RED. The discharge curve is just not what electronic cameras like. It's a lot different than an Arri III.

 

[D Namir]

I don't claim to know a lot about batteries but what i am talking is putting the kind of cells that are in the Red Brick inside another housing and connect it with a cable. The cable will be more solid in the way it will supply the power to the body than all the Red battery plates and cradles which suffer a lot from loose connections.
What old school got to do with it?

 

[D Namir]

In order to do the above we need the power connector scheme. Does anyone knows if it is published somewhere, I am tried of sending the cables chargers and cradles all the way to California for repair.

 

[Dylan Macleod CSC]

I've got a 4pin power cable (thanks panatech!) and use blocks as a "backup". I use the viewfactor on/off remote which shows the status of battery levels in the block.

Works beautifully.

 

[sander kamp]

In order to do the above we need the power connector scheme. Does anyone knows if it is published somewhere, I tried of sending the cables chargers and cradles all the way to California for repair.

RED operations guide page 66.

 

[D Namir]

I've got a 4pin power cable (thanks panatech!) and use blocks as a "backup". I use the viewfactor on/off remote which shows the status of battery levels in the block.

Works beautifully.

Thanks man for that and for confirming that viewfactor is real. I started to think that it doesn't exist after so many delays in delivery. Though I can tell only by Curt's image in the Red forum he is an honest guy.:wink:

 

[Pawel Achtel]

Isn't it the same like other battery dies during a shot?
Red batteries has the monitoring benefit of how much power is left, but other V-lock batteries don't (beside n the battery itself).
I am sure both methods of monitoring power can be applied to both other kind of batteries (block battery and other V-lock brand).

No, Red batteries are monitored by the camera, others are not.

Also, Red runs on 14.4V batteries while SLA are 12V and the camera will cut off before the battery is depleted.

Red Bricks are good batteries. They are relatively light weight and I am getting long recording times on them. I like them.

 

[Mitch Gross]

Anton Bauer makes some excellent block batteries with their own built in battery meters so you know when you're getting close to running out of juice. The big one will run a RED a full day and with our Abel RED kits we throw in a cable that connects to the RED One camera. Check them out on our website's RED Store at abelcine.com.

 

[Birns and Sawyer]

The old-school block batteries that I've tested have lasted just under an hour on each cell running the LCD and RED RAID. The LCD does start to flicker a bit towards the end of the battery life, so you get an idea that it's going dead, but it's pretty bad to look at. I think that those block batteries are basically just good for backup purposes.

I did test a battery from the House of Power that ran for more than 2 hours on a partial charge. It also has meters of amperage draw and voltage remaining so you can see where you stand before it dies.

 

[Stuart English]

Power systems

Power systems

with all the power problems and battery plate mounting difficulties Red owners are facing

While there were some issues with early battery plates, this seems to be behind us - yes? If so, this is a moot point.

If not, please send me a P.M and we can discuss what's happening in your specific system.

 

[D Namir]

Stuart,
Just PM you.
BTW hope you remember your promise to correct the misspelling there is when formatting magazines n build 17.
Magazines with no "z" and some others misspelling.