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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 :)

Any news on hot-swap battery plate (not dual)?

Steven-Marc C.

Steven-Marc C.

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There was a thread back in May where it was mentioned that a third party was working on a new battery plate that would integrate a small secondary battery that would give you a few seconds of power, enough to hot swap batteries with rebooting. Jarred posted that Red was also looking into it.
http://www.reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?p=213813&highlight=battery#post213813

Has any progress been made on this, either by Red or 3rd parties?

I know there are now several dual-plate adapter options available, but I'm looking for a lightweight solution.

In fact, while I really hope to upgrade to Epic or Scarlet once they become available, I'm trying to live as much as possible in the present and to improve the Red One which is working today and delivering fantastic images. There are still many ways the R1 can still be improved (thanks RED for the new firmwares, keep'em coming!), and this would be a really good one!
 
I would love a solution where you could temporarily clamp a second Element Technica Aluminum Battery Interface with SpeedyClamp onto the rail.

Pull some Kamikaze ninja maneuver while you hot swap batteries on your original battery plate.

Remove the temporary battery and you're back to the lightweight config
 
Curran Giddens said:
I would love a solution where you could temporarily clamp a second Element Technica Aluminum Battery Interface with SpeedyClamp onto the rail.

Pull some Kamikaze ninja maneuver while you hot swap batteries on your original battery plate.

Remove the temporary battery and you're back to the lightweight config
Click to expand...

You can do that today.

At the request of Off Hollywood, Abel made up a batch of "Suicide Cables," which have male P-Tap connectors on both ends. The idea is to take a battery plate with a fresh battery on it and plug it into the P-Tap port on your active camera battery plate and then swap that battery. The juice from the hot battery will power your camera during the swap. The only issue is feeding hot power into hot power, with the danger of a tiny arc between contact pins and 28.8v of power suddenly feeding instead of 14.4v. In reality this is almost impossible to have happen as the batteries are in parallel not series, but that's why I chose to call it a Suicide Cable. I believe that Birns & Sawyer made something similar that they refer to as a Warranty Buster, which is perhaps more to the point.

Anyway, a bunch of clients use these every day without incident, but they are definitely use at your own risk.
 
F.Y.I., Abel is selling them for about $175 which is really steep in my opinion.. Especially since we're talking around $60 in parts. I would have bought one if it was cheaper

Mitch Gross said:
You can do that today.

At the request of Off Hollywood, Abel made up a batch of "Suicide Cables," which have male P-Tap connectors on both ends. The idea is to take a battery plate with a fresh battery on it and plug it into the P-Tap port on your active camera battery plate and then swap that battery. The juice from the hot battery will power your camera during the swap. The only issue is feeding hot power into hot power, with the danger of a tiny arc between contact pins and 28.8v of power suddenly feeding instead of 14.4v. In reality this is almost impossible to have happen as the batteries are in parallel not series, but that's why I chose to call it a Suicide Cable. I believe that Birns & Sawyer made something similar that they refer to as a Warranty Buster, which is perhaps more to the point.

Anyway, a bunch of clients use these every day without incident, but they are definitely use at your own risk.
Click to expand...
 
I was hoping for a more integrated solution, not one that necessitates to carry around extra cable, battery plate and battery. This seems to be an acceptable solution for studio work or features, but not so interesting for one-man location work.
 
Solution for sale

Solution for sale

Hi guys,

I have been onto this form day one since I couldn't imagine a feature film team standing waiting for a camera to boot for an hour daily...

We run our RED's of powerblocks - I need three of them to last 14h.
Onboard lightweight batteries BRIDGE while separating body form power block.

All you do is plug your onboard in when disconnecting (little green led indicates connection) and unplug when back on power block.

That's one of the many work-arounds we developed to get a performance level out of this camera that is simply needed

If anyone wanted to buy such a system please send me an email to:
volker@vastvalley.com

Cheers
 
Steven-Marc said:
There was a thread back in May where it was mentioned that a third party was working on a new battery plate that would integrate a small secondary battery that would give you a few seconds of power, enough to hot swap batteries with rebooting. Jarred posted that Red was also looking into it.
http://www.reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?p=213813&highlight=battery#post213813

Has any progress been made on this, either by Red or 3rd parties?

I know there are now several dual-plate adapter options available, but I'm looking for a lightweight solution.
Click to expand...

I heard this rumour & enquired about it with Element Technica back in September (I don't think I'm out or order revealing that?). They confirmed they were developing it but that it was quite complicated and was taking longer than they'd hoped for. This bit of gear would be one of the final jigsaw pieces for making the Red a good, competitive shooting option.
 
Steven-Marc said:
I was hoping for a more integrated solution, not one that necessitates to carry around extra cable, battery plate and battery. This seems to be an acceptable solution for studio work or features, but not so interesting for one-man location work.
Click to expand...

You could have two battery plates mounted to the camera, one the RED unit and the other the Element Technica unit (or two RED plates or two Element Technica plates, etc.). Plug one unit into the camera and plug the second unit into the first but only when performing the battery swaps. You'll always have to have at least three batteries around on your job but you don't have to dedicate a battery to working on the second plate all the time as it is only needed during the changeovers and that lasts just a few seconds.
 
Mitch Gross said:
You could have two battery plates mounted to the camera, one the RED unit and the other the Element Technica unit (or two RED plates or two Element Technica plates, etc.). Plug one unit into the camera and plug the second unit into the first but only when performing the battery swaps. You'll always have to have at least three batteries around on your job but you don't have to dedicate a battery to working on the second plate all the time as it is only needed during the changeovers and that lasts just a few seconds.
Click to expand...
Thanks Mitch, that's how I understood it. It's just not quite ideal when you're travelling alone with the camera and equipment in a backpack. Having 3 batteries is not a problem, it's more the fact that you need a place to put all the equipment down, take out the secondary battery plate, plug it in, plug the battery, etc. And of course I am looking for a perfectly safe solution, not a Warranty Breaker. ;)

Most of the time, rebooting is not a problem, but every once in a while you run into a situation where it is just not convenient, or worse, makes you miss a shot.
 
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