P2 to External HD in Field

What about a digital still camera storage device? I was looking at the Epson Multimedia Storage devices and they have USB 2.0 and an 80 gig drive that is battery powered for less than $600. Wouldn't one of these be a great poor man's P2 Store? Replacable rechargable batteries, too!
cheers,
Sam
 
SamEdwards said:
What about a digital still camera storage device? I was looking at the Epson Multimedia Storage devices and they have USB 2.0 and an 80 gig drive that is battery powered for less than $600. Wouldn't one of these be a great poor man's P2 Store? Replacable rechargable batteries, too!
cheers,
Sam
Click to expand...

The digital still storages devices I've seen usually come with a card reader, and I am assuming dumping is from the card reader.

If the dump is also possible off the USB cable from the cam then I'd really be interested.
 
SamEdwards said:
I was looking at the Epson Multimedia Storage devices and they have USB 2.0 and an 80 gig drive that is battery powered for less than $600. Wouldn't one of these be a great poor man's P2 Store? Replacable rechargable batteries, too!
cheers,
Sam
Click to expand...
$600? Why bother with something like that? Get a $35 MWAVE battery-powered USB2.0 "On The Go" enclosure, and an $80 80-gb 2.5" notebook hard disk. For just over $100 you'd have the super-cheap offload option... but it's slow as compared to firewire offloading, and it ties up the camera during the offload. But again, it's cheap...
 
Green hornet -

I think the main reason for persuing this option is it can be done on the cheap. There are a lot of us who struggled just to afford the camera and a couple of P2 cards. A P2 Store could be considered a luxury for some of us.

I went down the firewire drive root for the security of at least being able to have the files verified after transfer (not possible with USB).
There are virtually no battery powered 2.5inch firewire drive enclosures, hence the need to build a maplin/radioshack battery pack. As has been pointed out, this can all provide a field useable (and I have tested it, it is quite usable in the field) disk offload option for a very small amount:

40GB 2.5 inch 5400 rpm drive - 70 USD
2.5 inch firewire drive enclosure - 40USD
home made maplin radioshack battery box - 15USD

Personally I would much prefer a P2 Store or a Firestore, but not at the current prices.
 
Hmmm.

The trials of living in Canada.

I ran down to the local Radio Shack, which is now known as the "Source" in Canada, due to name copyright problems with Radio Shack in the US. Their electronic department, which used to be huge, has shrunk down to a small section. They did not have the items I needed.

The Mwave people do not ship to Canada, so I was out of luck there.

Hopefully George Bush will invade us, so I could shop more efficiently.
 
For the voltage regulator from radio shack, try part number 276-1770

It has thermal overload protection in case you don't have proper heat sink.
It also has current limiting, and can take upto 35 volts input.

You might want to buy the cheap R/C car batteries and charger. The 7.2 volts should do nicely without creating too much heat, and be powerful enough to get the drive going.

Good luck.
 
What's This Limit Thing On Fw/p2 Transfers?

What's This Limit Thing On Fw/p2 Transfers?

Could someone please explain. I just did several successful camera to HD transfers in my car on the road and not sure what you guys mean about a limit?

thanks
 
Is there a OTG enclosure out there that can transfer a 4 gig card faster than 7 mins 45 seconds?

It seems USB2.0 is a bottleneck when it comes to transfering the data across.
 
Hi Milezee,
Can you recommend a place to learn how to follow the diagram. I bought all the pieces at Radio Shack but I'm not too clear on what gets soldered to what. They also didn't have a 6 battery holder so I got the 8. Will that work as is or do I need to bypass two of the batteries?
thanks,
Sam
 
Barry_Green said:
$600? Why bother with something like that? Get a $35 MWAVE battery-powered USB2.0 "On The Go" enclosure, and an $80 80-gb 2.5" notebook hard disk. For just over $100 you'd have the super-cheap offload option... but it's slow as compared to firewire offloading, and it ties up the camera during the offload. But again, it's cheap...
Click to expand...

I have this, and I haven't been able to get it to load files off the HVX200 since I got it. Does the HDD have to be formatted in FAT32 to work?
 
Portable HD for HVX200

Portable HD for HVX200

To start with let's forget about USB connections for fast and secure connections. Firewire is the fastest interface there is, no matter what USB 2.0 defenders will argue. It's still the only professional system in use, even with a faster firewire mode coming along.

Also please forget about AA batteries for such application, as it will be a pain in the butt. Use a Nebtek adapter to power your external HD, which will let you use your camera batteries and make a compact external rechargeable supply. An AA battery supply can be used for emergencies, but I wouldn't recommend it for this application. And even then with the larger capacity rechargeable AA you can find.

And get a large size HD, 200GB or more, from a reliable brand, like Seagate (please stay away from Maxtor or WD), formatted as it should be.

And be very careful when you move your HD around, as they are quite fragile.
 
Carlos_E._Martinez said:
And get a large size HD, 200GB or more, from a reliable brand, like Seagate (please stay away from Maxtor or WD), formatted as it should be.
Click to expand...

Um, if you're using firewire, isn't 200Gb a waste? There is the 15 card limit, if you're using 4Gb cards then you are going to waste a lot of space. Even with 8Gb cards there will be a lot of wasted space.

Regular AAs are not worth it but high capacity (say 6x 2300mWAh) rechargable are worthwhile. I get several transfers out of my cheapo home made battery pack.

BTW Sam, you can use the 8 AAs and the regulator will sort it out, but its generally not very efficient. Make sure you have a heatsink on the regulator as it will get hot. There are plenty of websites to point you in the right direction on basic electronics and soldering, sorry not got time to link. Go google it.
 
Milezee said:
Um, if you're using firewire, isn't 200Gb a waste? There is the 15 card limit, if you're using 4Gb cards then you are going to waste a lot of space. Even with 8Gb cards there will be a lot of wasted space.
Click to expand...

I am not too sure what you mean by the 15 card limit. Probably a limitation I am not aware about.

The size of the HDD may depend on how much you are going to record and how far you are from your main computer. If you roughly consider P2's 1GB being one minute, then 200GB would be 3 hours and 20minutes. On a documentary and doing interviews, as I did recently, it wouldn't be so absurd to think you may need all that space.

Regular AAs are not worth it but high capacity (say 6x 2300mWAh) rechargable are worthwhile. I get several transfers out of my cheapo home made battery pack.
Click to expand...

Simplifying your battery options might be a good idea, I think. Using camera batteries for as many applications as you can on your location might be interesting.

But I believe in doing adaptors for emergency situations, and then rechargeable AAs, 2300mA or higher, would be quite interesting.

For cameras, for instance, what I suggest is using 6 x AA boxes to make 7.2v emergency supplies. What I have done on my cameras is clip the AC/DC supply cable, 20" before the camera end, and put XLR-4 connectors (male & female). Then I put another XLR-4 end on the AA box end and voilá!: emergency battery saves your day.

The Nebtek adaptor is great, and I think would be a good option for the HDD portable combo.
 
Carlos what they are referring to is the fact that if you are using the HVX in 1394 HOSt mode you can only transfer 15 4GB Cards for a total of around 60GBS regardless of the size of the HDD you are using. The camera actually counts the number of times you dump to the drive when 15 times is up you will need to reformat the HDD before you can back up to it again. I'm not 100% sure of the reasoning for this but you can do a search here on the boards as this has been discussed at length.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top