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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 :)

Lost One Night Shoot--Red One Won't Boot from Red Brick--PLEASE HELP!

@OP.. As other folks have said.. generator is not to be run inside a car.
if this is for inside a car work.. inverter plugged into cig lighter.
I have also seen battery and inverter combo units.. (worked on a show that used them for timelapse outdoors last week).. they are pricier, but also will jumpstart a car!
I had not caught that this was to shoot car interiors at first.. and yes.. large ones do need to be hooked directly to the car battery terminals...
 
Good info Jeff, many thanks. And Jim I'm going to give that a shot and see if re installing the firmware helps. Kris from Red support just contacted me and is working on my support ticket. I'll keep you guys posted and let you know the results, in case another R1 owner down the line runs into a similar situation. You guys are awesome, glad to be part of such a supportive community.
 
jimhare said:
Also, maybe reinstall the firmware on the R1 and see if your battery comes back to life. Might just be a glitch.
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Jim, I was wondering about this too. Something may be triggering a fault when DC is read. Before sending in the camera, do a re-install and see if that does the trick. If not and you are confident you have tested other battery plates that you know should work, then send it in. The firmware trick is the cheapest option.
 
Hey Chris, don't worry about a 400 watt invertor in your cigarette lighter. I run one all the time. Just ran an Epic for 10 hours straight off one. There will be no problems. You are better off with a 400 watt inverter than a 100 watt one for sure. Those are max outputs, not continuous. 400 watts should be plenty safe through the cigarette lighter. 800 might be a bit borderline. 1200 watts is pushing it.

And if you have to go portable, just buy a battery at Costco or somewhere and get a couple of clips to attach your inverter.

I think the advice of re-installing firmware is a good one. Although that is probably not the issue. But the long mag time format is out of bounds.
 
If you do go the battery with an inverter route I would suggest an AGM (absorbed glass mat) or Gel Cell battery. They are deep cycle so you can drain them and it won't effect their memory also they are sealed so they won't leak acid. You can get them at most marine hardware stores like West Marine (open every day). They can also set you up with a female cigarette lighter socket to attach to the battery or you could crimp on terminals and attach the inverter directly to the battery. The good thing about a battery with an inverter is it is portable so it could be used in the field without a car.
 
Well, it just keeps getting better. I re-installed the firmware, and was trying to plug in the lemo cable from the quickplate. Although the red dots were aligned, I felt resistance and didn't want to push and risk damaging the cable. So started turning the tip of the cable, and I guess I went too far because the tip suddenly came off, the interior metal half cylinders that wrap around the tip came in contact with the gold spikes, and there was quite a spark and pop. Yeah the battery was still in the cradle, my mistake. I dropped the cable, quickly pulled off the battery, but I noticed a black charred area around the base of one of the gold pins. Kris advised me not to try connecting this quickplate anymore and risk damaging the camera. Unfortunately, I don't have another battery quickplate to try and see if re-installing the firmware helped or not. And I never got around to disconnecting the SSD module and reconnecting it either. I sent her a camera log and we're waiting for an engineer to review it. When it rains it pours...

RedCradleLemo.jpg
 
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If the soldered connection to the rear of the scorched pin has not melted and gone open, that plug may be repairable. The charred area on the plastic core would need to be carefully scraped clean so that no conductive carbon bridge develops to short out.

It may no longer be reliable if the spline protrusion on the plastic centre has become damaged and sooner or later again allows the centre to twist inside the two metal shield halves and the rear case. Lemos are nicely made but not bulletproof. If the plug assembly loosens a little, it is possible for the mechanical strength of the cables to move inside the rear clamping arrangement and overpower the plastic core.

If the plug assembly has loosened, if the pins when the plug is incorrectly offered are able to make contact with the face of the socket between the holes, are under pressure against this face and the operator then forcefully twists the plug body to make the matchmark and spline line up, it is possible in combination with forces on the cable to overpower the plastic core and twist it inside the body.

Whatever the cause, it rotates inside the shield halves causing the pins to move out of their correct position and baulk at the socket as you experienced. When offering these plugs up to a socket and having to twist them to line up the spline, it is best to use two hands to offer the cable and plug up to the socket gently and straight, one hand holding the plug itself, the other hand holding the cable and twisting both so the plug finds its match and slides home without stressing the cable/plug fitment.

XLR or Cannon style plugs often used asymmetric pin patterns as a redundent donkeytrap against incorrect insertion if the internal core loosened or some nitwit decided to use just the core as a plug. I vaguely recall, the asymetric pin patterned core WAS the entire original plug back in the early days of valve ( tube ) electronics and the metal bodies with cable support came along later when the plugs were to be frequently disconnected and used outdoors. Some historian had better correct me on this.

The pin core would go in one way and one way only. Not so with some of the Lemos. The pin patterns may fit in several incorrect positions if the pins are symmetrically patterned as your 6pin appears to be.

The LAN data/power cable for remoting the camera head from recorder on the SI2K from memory was a 12 pin Lemo plug in an apparent symmetrical pin arrangement of three possible incorrect positions.

The only guarantee of correct position is the spline at the plug-socket, the internal spline locking the pin core correctly in the shield halves and tails on the shield halves themselves locking correctly into the plug body.

The same thing you experienced I have myself run into on an oral history job.

Fortunately, one of the very thin pins bent and prevented the plug core from finding an incorrect match as it may eventually have done with enough fidding about. I managed to straighten the pin and reassemble the plug correctly and we completed the shoot. P+S Technik recommended we not perservere with the cable and replaced it for us.

If your plug core had twisted and the pins were offering up to the camera with one pin distance rotated and no longer connecting correctly, this may explain the dead connection despite the plug apparently fitting correctly. Hopefully there has been no damage to the battery data circuit in the camera. I imagine that in the 6pin arrangement there is a +ve power supply pin, -ve power supply pin, maybe a pin grounded to shield and two or three data pins which enable the camera to talk to intelligent batteries. Maybe not all pns are used. Maybe pairs of pins are bridged together for more reliable connection.

In your situation, unless you have really good fine hand control, a trained eye for understanding miniature mechanical detail and no other parts in the plug are damaged like splines or tails, the best solution is to forget about repairing the plug, use the generator and leave the battery system to the repairman who knows all or should.

If you decide to go ahead regardless, if you have a webcamera Skype where you are and can get hold of a tech to talk you through it, that might be workable. Among all the fingers and things, it might be pretty hard for the camera to see in close enough for the tech to make sense of it. The skype is a wonderful tool however. A tech at 1-Beyond was able to talk me through a repair on a damaged Wrangler 3D recorder from half a world away. It was a fascinating experience looking at the vision of the tech and some others leaning on his chair from behind peering in as well and we collectively won that round.

At a real extreme, if you can't get hold of a tech and you have a webcam you can gaffertape to a stick, itself gaffered to a tripod head to get the camera close to the plug, pm me here with your Skype address and I'll see if I can talk you through.

Please listen to the wisdom of others before my offerings.
 
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does your camera still power up from ac power supply?
At this point, I would be parked outside RED Studios in the AM when they open... would be worried I had cooked components in the camera.
 
Christopher Mills said:
does your camera still power up from ac power supply?
At this point, I would be parked outside RED Studios in the AM when they open... would be worried I had cooked components in the camera.
Click to expand...

It does, we just shot a whole day of interiors running on AC power. It's just not running off the red bricks, or interestingly enough, not working when powered by the dual charger either. Oh yes, I'll be at Red Studios bright and early!
 
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