Red batteries on IDX quad charger

[Dustin Cross]

Aloha,

I have been having a little problem with my Red batteries on my IDX quad charger. If I take the batteries off the camera and immediately put them on the charger, the charger gives me a battery fault. If I wait a few minutes between taking the batteries off the camera and putting them on the charger, everything works great.

I am guessing the camera draws more from the batteries or heats up the batteries more than the tolerance of the charger allows and that set off the fault. And letting the batteries rest for a few minutes cools them down or something.

I don't know the real reason, so this is just to let people know in case you start getting battery faults on non Red chargers.

Other than this the quad charger is working great!


Mahalo,
Dusty

 

[Julian Banos]

Dusty,

I am about to purchase 2 of these chargers. Would you mind telling me how long does it take to charge 4 red batteries at the same time?
Any kind of benchmark would really help me.

Thank you,

Julian

 

[Chris Burket]

I had the same problem with the RED charger on a shoot. If I took a battery right off the camera and put it on the charger, it would give me an error (solid red light). I had to wait about 10 minutes for the battery to cool off. I thought the charger was supposed to retry if it had a fault, but we left one on overnight and it was still dead in the morning.

Another thing I didn't realize about the red charger is that it can't charge two batteries at the same time. This isn't a huge deal, but its something to be aware of.

A similar problem seemed to occur when taking a battery right off the charger and putting it on the camera. The camera would freeze when booting, but if we just waited about 2 or 3 minutes (and unplugged the drive), the camera would then boot.

So its not just the IDX charger. I'm tempted to get IDX powercubes instead of the red batteries. I've had really good experiences with them on set. They pack a lot of power, and have a nice quad simultaneous charger.

 

[Anders Holck]

From my tests, two Red chargers will get 4 RED batteries charged in 1/2 to 3/4 of the time it takes the IDX. The Red charger gets them to 80% very quickly.
We have one RED charger per 4 batteries, and a quad IDX at the facility for overnights.

 

[Anders Holck]

Btw. If charging on the IDX, you get a faster charge time by only mounting 3 batteries. If you mount all 4 batteries the charge current per battery will be lower than when mounting 1-3. So basically 1-3 batteries gives the same "high" current to all batteries, mount 4 and it drops the current to a lower level across all batteries.

 

[Julian Banos]

Great info Anders. BTW, Im also in the process of buying 2 Ugrips thanks to your posts and advice from a good friend.

 

[Dustin Cross]

Anders,

Do you have any times for how long it takes to charge Red vs IDX?

I will try to remember to time my IDX.

Right now if I start the day with 4 fully charged batteries. Run the camera non stop, putting dead batteries back on charger as they die and replacing camera with a charged battery. By the time I put the fourth battery on the camera, the first battery is charged.

So I less than 4 hours to charge that first battery, with a second battery charging for part of that time, but I haven't paid attention to how much less. Most importantly, I always have a fully charged battery on the charger and on the camera.


Mahalo,
Dusty

 

[vincelucero]

Hey Dusty,

Mahalo nui for the great info on raid systems. I'm now looking for a way to use my Dell Poweredge 1800 to be a video server for our Mac network. So much to do...

Aloha,

vince

 

[Jarred Land]

anders.. great tip on the 1-3 battery charging.