Power issue, how to diagnose where the fault lies, clip, bricks, body?

[Brian Merlen]

Just got my Dragon back from Red from the MX-> Dragon upgrade and used it on my friends thesis student film as a favor. I keep having improper shut downs on hot bricks. Assuming all my bricks aren't trashed I am trying to isolate the problem to my battery belt clip or my camera body. Any idea how to isolate the issue easily without sending the camera/bricks/belt clip into Red? Do you think Red NYC could figure it out for me or do I need to send it all to Irvine? I just emailed tech support but am hoping to figure out the problem without needing to go without my camera if possible. Obviously I want to side on the side of caution and not fry it though...


I was considering asking a buddy for some other bricks to test it against. One of my bricks (paglinks) is missing a small button for the hot swapping, broke off in a case or something silly. Other one has no physical issues at all, but as of two days ago only has the LCD display 50 percent charge, at all times. It never gave me issues before, but now it seems to only read 50 percent when its full right up until it drains. They were both hot though and this was happening to me yesterday with either brick, and with both of them connected (paglinks cool feature is that you can hot swap on them, its like a double v mount, one on the back so you can add bricks if your about to lose power and don't have a side handle and volts). I ended up using a generator and surge protector to power the camera and got through the rest of the day fine, but it wasn't ideal.


So its entirely possible my bricks are having issues, but they aren't that old and have been living in a case mostly, along with the belt clip. Camera works all the time, but these parts have been hardly used since I got them but seem to all be having issues or one part of the mix has issues. I almost hope its the camera since its under warranty. Any ideas on diagnostics would be highly appreciated, thanks guys!

 

[Justin McAleece]

Test the camera with your AC adapter and wiggle it around a bit (without hurting anything) and see if you can recreate the shutdown. If not then grab a voltmeter and start tracing through each step. Maybe attach the meter to the battery and see if any movement triggers that off. Then you could put the battery on the plate and attach the voltmeter to the other end of the battery plate cable. Move things around, see what happens. I took apart my plate and narrowed it down to a disconnect in between a receiving pin on the plate and the lead off of that. Basically a bad pin. Keep testing, it can be quite frustrating to nail all this down though.

 

[ericyoung]

Note that single Paglinks are rated at 8A current output which is nominally 96W power at 12V. Now I'm not sure what power draw Dragons are, but the Red One MX & Epic MX cameras had 150W AC Mains power supplies as standard over the original Red One M 100W supplies, which implies a power draw approaching 100W without accessories - hence the beefier power supplies.

You need two piggy backed Paglinks to supply 12A output, and be comfortably in the Paglink specification. A single Paglink will likely be working right at the limits of its specifications or beyond, and therefore continuously running excessively hot, and suffering from voltage droop due to excessive current draw - hence both the low capacity reading and sudden shutdowns.

 

[Brian Merlen]

had no idea, thanks so much! should I grab more, what is your opinion of them? Being that the button broke off one in a case without any abuse I am somewhat hesitant to grab more. I didn't have much on the camera at all, screen and ssd module was it, bare bones if that helps with the power but had no idea it was pushing it, since i never had trouble with them on mx and used to use just one at a time all the time.. I kind of want Dionics since I recently bought four of them for my Arri, haven't had them long enough to know if they can take a beating but they seem to be pretty standard around me and are cheap. I wanted pag links cuz i wanted to get a ton of them on tap at once on one charger but the button thing kind of makes me wonder if I should stick to Dionics despite the fact I'll need probably two chargers..

I think I still had the problem with both mounted at once, but I had probably drained one already? Also the one without the busted top button might need to be recelled I wonder since when I charge it the past couple nights to full the LCD says half always. So assuming it needs to be recelled I am now 0 for 2 between both issues, so just not sure what to move forward with

 

[ericyoung]

I'm not saying that what I describe is definitely the case, especially as it seems you weren't loaded up with powered accessories, and weren't experiencing a problem before. It was just another possibility to investigate. Also try Justin's suggestions.

While 8A is the specification, I'm sure PAG will have some margin built in. PAG are a very long established and reputable company in the UK and European broadcast market, so I would expect them to be pretty robust.
If your battery button broke off so easily I would definitely contact either your supplier about either a free replacement or repair, or PAG UK directly if that fails. Note, that there are heavy restrictions on shipping Li Ion batteries, so you will likely have to deal with a US PAG agent even if it's PAG UK who OK any repair/replacement.
I would also contact PAG UK support about the 50% reading.

My opinion of them is that they are a great V-Lock battery system, especially for travel, although I do prefer the Anton Bauer plate system in terms of mechanical mounting security.
There are a few other PAGLink Redusers on this forum (one of them is selling a bunch of them as he wants to standardise on AB ones on all his kit), who seem to be happy with them.