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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 :)

RedMote - Please Red

Unfortunately we were dealing with someone who could simply receive the items and they had no knowledge or details of testing etc. I wish i had answers (actually i wish they had answers) then and now but ultimately i dont.

at the same time i brought in a cable that was missing the rear seat on the 90 deg bracket and was charged $240. the cable was fine, it just needed a replacement hexagonal piece of metal, but red wanted to repair the whole cable. after i refused the "repair" (read: replacement) i was charged $100 for them to return the cable to me (i was picking it up from the studios). Apparently it was for diagnosing (which not only had i already done "look, this metal piece is gone, can i get another?" but was an obvious problem and took nothing more than eyeballing). i never received answers to my questions of "why?' for anything. i only learned where to send it and how much it would cost.

to me there are a lot of things that seem like they never went through testing outside of those who are already hardcore red users and dont look back. like an sdi/bnc port thats nearly impossible to get cables in and out of, especially if the redmote is attached.
 
brett mayfield said:
to me there are a lot of things that seem like they never went through testing outside of those who are already hardcore red users and dont look back. like an sdi/bnc port thats nearly impossible to get cables in and out of, especially if the redmote is attached.
Click to expand...

This is the glory and the shame of Red ownership, you have a camera that makes beautiful images but kicks you in the shins and forces you to buy things like an SDI elbow...

for dealing with this problem

bncelbow.jpg


for dealing with all problems

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dukkha
 
oh we all know and feel it. c'est la red.
and i love my elbows, but i gotta get those on and off too, haha!
 
Just experienced the "enter" problem on my Redmote, which is all of a month and a half old and has probably been actively used for about a week total.
 
I don't quite understand why REDMOTE connectivity seems to be such a random affair. Last night I used the remote for half an hour straight without a single disconnect. Today, in exactly the same conditions, REDMOTE dropped out after 2 minutes of use and the only way to restore the connection was to reboot both the remote and the camera. This is not the kind of reliability one expects from professional gear.
 
My Redmote was giving me about 8ft reception, as instructed by red I files a support ticket, Red freighted my Epic from Australia for free and have replaced the Redlink antennae. They'll of course ship it back at their cost too. turnaround is about 10 days. Presuming it will be firing on all cylinders but will give a full heads up when i see Epic #22 again pre NAB.

So if your not getting great TX distance just ping Red, they want you to be happy.
 
Jason Wingrove said:
My Redmote was giving me about 8ft reception, as instructed by red I files a support ticket, Red freighted my Epic from Australia for free and have replaced the Redlink antennae. They'll of course ship it back at their cost too. turnaround is about 10 days. Presuming it will be firing on all cylinders but will give a full heads up when i see Epic #22 again pre NAB.

So if your not getting great TX distance just ping Red, they want you to be happy.
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Now that's great customer service! I can deal with problems as long as the customer service is like that!
 
I'm still waiting to hear of someone who's had their Redmote serviced, or replaced, and can now use it reliably, from a modest distance, ALL DAY, on a real film set, as a professional tool.
I'd like to see it demonstrated in the Red booth at NAB, also.
There have been far more sightings of UFOs lately, than of Redmote being used happily all day without tiresome reconnection procedures.

The first time I used a Redmote remotely, on a technocrane, it was hopeless.
Now i use it docked to the camera, to produce a beep on Recording and stopping.
If I'd tried to keep using it off camera, it would have been thrown and smashed long ago.

I encourage anyone who needs remote start/ stop functionality to use one of the wired solutions available out there, if it fills needs e.g. working on a crane.
From what I see, Red have a policy against producing a wired solution, and I'd guess it's because a long cable running across a set, or device wired to the CPU could destroy the CPU if damaged while connected.
It would only be a week or two, and Red would have to deal with a camera who's wired Redmote was dropped in a puddle of water.
 
in our case: it definitely works a better on the latest firmware (updated from 2.0.5 to 3.0.0 about two weeks ago)… but it's still not at a point where I'd call it reliable enough for whole-shooting-day action. And I'm talking only short-distance here - we were using it at a maximum distance of like 1.5 to 2 meters. With 2.0.5 it was working like 1 out of 3 times after being pulled from the EPIC dock. With 3.0.0 it is working like 2 out of 3 times, I'd say we're at 75% working chance now - thats still not 100% like it should be… by not working I mean not establishing a quick auto-connection after being pulled. If I manually dial in our EPIC it works sometimes - but I don't really have the time to do that on set when the Cam is shouldered for immediate shooting. I also don't have the time for a reboot or docking & un-docking again (which usually fixes the connection loss)… As for troubleshooting - jep, the mote is tethered correctly, the camera has a name, the mote is charged and so on.

Waiting for the next firmware release to see what happens. Right now we use it as long as it works, in that process it gets docked & un-docked as needed. And sometimes the auto-reconnect after undocking it just don't work… at that point we stop using it until we have the time to look into the issue - which is not often the case. "Reliable" would mean that the auto-reconnect after pulling the mote will work every single time - that's just not the case right now, we're at like 70% but not at 100%…

Don't know the experience of other users in this case… would be good to have more real-world opinions.
As for the "Hardware" itself -> no problems with the buttons and stuff, from that point our unit is solid from day one.
 
I've never even bothered to use mine wirelessly - It wouldn't mate with my Epic from a couple of feet away, so that's pointless.

All I want is to attach it to the back of the camera so I can control it when the VF is in use... But with a non-functional "enter" button that is even moot.
 
The last two days I've been using the Redmote nearly completely wireless and have been let down several times throughout the shoot. On several occasions the the unit became non responsive and/or disconnected unexpectedly. I had to restart the unit to re-establish a connection, even docking on the camera sometimes wasn't enough. I love the IDEA of the Redmote, and when it works it is amazing, but I am a bit disappointed by the lack of reliability in the system.
 
Just got my Epic back from Service having the Redmote transmit distance looked at. No time to chi the new distance just yet but the Redlink card or antenna under the panel has been changed just FYI

Left is before, Right is after. Standby fir testing

(see update below!.. worth sending it back)


jas
 

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Interesting - Is there writing on the new one obscured by glare in the picture?
 
From a total amateur, SI2K heretic and non-nerd.

Anything that works with wireless radio-frequencies is something of a minor miracle in that it works at all. At the ultra high frequencies and low powers these things operate with, there is so much to go wrong. I do not know how the guts of the remote and the transmitter-receiver on the EPIC work. There are some aspects common to the discussion which lead me to some random and unscientific thoughts :-

Non-responsive touch-screens. Dry fingertips will prompt a touchscreen less reliably. Choose and practice with one fingertip for the touch screen and use a bit of sandpaper to rub the skin down a fraction. Workhardened fingertips are dry. Sustained prods versus scratches and taps work better. Separate the inputs a little more patiently to give the system time to have a bit of a think. It is after all handling 4K images, which is a workload.

Conflicting accounts of 5ft- 10ft and long operating distances achieved through walls etc.. RF propagation at ultrahigh frequencies is a bit of a lottery when there are metal structures, hardware, steel re-inforced concrete, moisture loaded leaves on trees and damp grass around. Even soggy humans stalking around will have an effect. Add other radio-frequency interference and any low powered radio system will become less effective.

The posted cameraphone demonstration of long distance operating looks to have been conducted in a timberframed dwelling house. Odds on that house has climate control and is fairly dry inside.

In comments, there is reference to a "default" setting and "scanning" and the "default" seeming to be the best. This hints to me that the system, like some wireless mikes, may have a facility to transmit and receive on more than one "channel". This would be desirable if more than one EPIC and REMOTE inhabited the room unless each camera and redmote pair forms its own discreet digital bond (encription?), uninfluenced by the presence of another.

A RF "scanning" function and ability to change frequencies if indeed it exists raises another possibility. At close proximity, is the transmitter/receiver on top of the EPIC and/or the REDMOTE somehow "preferring" to establish a link on another lower power "harmonic" or "spurious" radiofrequency signal getting out?

My imagining is that the "first" signal the system finds may be what it finetunes to. It may not be the most powerful and may not be the fundimental frequency. Therefore, with distance, it will fade quickly. Added accessories as well as shading RF reception, may also assist propogation of a lower powered harmonic signal.

I would be inclined to try if possible, unpowering the REDMOTE if possible before detaching a poorly functioning REDMOTE from the camera body, take it furthur than cutoff range from the camera, say about 15ft, power it up and then let it attempt to handshake with the camera in the scan mode. If there is a harmonic issue going on, then it should hunt a bit harder for the fundimental frequency and ignore the harmonic.

On radio-frequency propagation, it might be helpful for RED engineers to drag in an older school ex-military radio technican familiar with frequency-agile communications hardware, give him some essential diagnostic gadgets to play with and turn him loose. Digital technicians do not always equally good radio-frequency engineers make. There is a reason why FCC rules limit transmission powers of wifi systems radio-mikes and the like. Spurious emission is a significant one of them. Historically, videocamera systems have had less then stellar performance relating to radio-frequency interfence getting in.

There seems to be something going on with batteries and them not reaching a fully charged state. It may be that some batteries have not yet become "conditioned" through a few deeper cycles of use and may not be developing their full power. This may affect radiofrequency transmissions from the REDMOTE and their effective range. Battery conditioning may not have time to occur during the period the REMOTE is found to be flakey and given up on.


Finally. All of these factors may be additive in causing a problem, not single individual causes on their own.

And in conclusion, all my quite uninformed speculation above may be absolute BS due to too little actual knowledge of the RED products.
 
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OK after sending my Camera & red mote back to red for a look see and the change shown above my range (admittedly just one test but in the harsh radio environment of the NAB halls) I've gone from about 8 feet to around 80 feet.
The signal strength meter doesn't seem to make much sense or have any real bearing on the two communicating, it just works. I was kinda line of sight but there was some partitions and glass between here and there but again if your getting 8, 10, 12 ft etc then as red say lodge a ticket and get that camera back to HQ. Its worth it.
 
My RedMote works fine when wireless and simply DOES NOT work when docked! Shows it's docked, charges the battery, tries to "connect" but never does :( but if taken off camera it connects and seems to hold the link pretty good. For a while I thought that firmware update would fix it, but once updated nothing changed, so here I am writing this up. What should I do? support ticket or what? Red guys, help!
 
Dennis Guskov said:
My RedMote works fine when wireless and simply DOES NOT work when docked! Shows it's docked, charges the battery, tries to "connect" but never does :( but if taken off camera it connects and seems to hold the link pretty good. For a while I thought that firmware update would fix it, but once updated nothing changed, so here I am writing this up. What should I do? support ticket or what? Red guys, help!
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File a support ticket. If you can get your hands on another REDmote to test that would help determine if it is a problem with the REDmote or the camera.
 
RedMote & Red Backpack

RedMote & Red Backpack

Hello all,
I just got the Red Backpack because I really like the idea of repurposing all my (still fine) Red bricks, and being able to attach them directly to the back of my Epic-X. It's really nice. Question, how do I/what do I need to make this work with the Redmote (also just arrived), can this be done? I'd love to have this rear mounted Red brick battery AND the option to have the Redmote attached to the camera body. The Module Adapter thing doesn't seem to be the answer. What am I missing?

Thanks,
 
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