P2 Store - Is it just me?

Goonie

Goonie

Active member
Or does Panasonic appear to be EXTREMELY cheap for not including an AC adapter or battery with it? I mean, seriously... how many products (especially at this price range) do you buy that have absolutely NO way to power wihtout buying something else? AND it's not even stated on the box that it's not included.

Tsk-tsk.

Erik.
 
The power adapter from the camera works with it I believe. Maybe they are thinking that people that will be buying it will already have the power adapter and extra camera batteries. Those things are expensive and would have increased the price another $100 at least.
 
Yes.. I thought it was a little cheap to not get an AC adapter with the unit.. but this is how it is with lots of products too...


The HVX power does work with the unit albeit it took me a bit to work it out.. Just like the unit did on the HVX.


Is it also just me in the fact that the power cord to the HVX shouldn be attached on the other end and not jammed on the inside like it is? Seems really wonky.. but my ultimate wonky consideration is the mike holder... WHat's all that bounce for? man...
 
Love the HVX, believe in and support Panasonic, but....

I hate buying products with no power supply.

Unless there was just no way to design the power cord flipped due to so much other stuff crammed in, (I can live with it), YES, I wish it went the othe way. I'm sure we'll be seeing those power bars with shorted wires within a year.

I don't mind the Mic holder. But I'll have to use it more to make my vote.
I like having it there to hold down all the other wires with my Anton Bauer Stasis and other 3rd party products.
 
I understand the sentiments. For me, I bought it with three batteries and two chargers already in hand for the HVX. (One charger for the case, and one for my office).
 
I realize that they expect you to use your HVX power supply & batteries. However, I don't necessarily want to use it for the P2 Store instead. If I use the charger on the P2 Store, then I can't be using it on my HVX. I have 5 batteries in my kit -- for my camera. I have two chargers (one for my old DVX & one for my HVX) but that is the point -- they already belong to something else. I cannot think of another item at this price that didn't come with a power cord or some way to run the item. Not one. It's almost as annoying as every printer company thinking it's ok to not include a damn cheap USB cable...
 
I agree that for the price, they could have put a simple power supply. But their view is probably the people who order it will order alot of these for multiple people field use, and it would be a waste for them to have powersupply that arnt used.

The same goes for battery.

But I would have like maybe a free mailin power supply offer for those of us.
 
For the price of what the sum of it's parts are, they could have, and I will also say should have, put in a charger...ok if they wanted to go the cheap route, they could have put in a $10 7.9v power supply that goes into the port where the battery would go.

I believe Radio shack has a power supply that would work in that port for $10.

In any case, maybe someone who was an editor wanted to buy the P2 store, that had no desire to buy the camera.

It's like buying a car without wheels, a printer with out ink, serving food with out utensils to eat it with. Every product should be able to work without the purchase of something else. Especially if it cost $1,600.
 
I'm thinking about getting a P2 store here really quick and I can see the logic in it not having a power supply come with the unit. First off if your going to buy the P2 store your more than likely going to have the HVX, which comes with a power supply that can power the P2 store when you take it back to base to offload the footage. Or you could just use a battery in the field to offload it to a laptop. Sure it would be nice to have an extra power supply just incase but I don't see this as being a problem. Seems to me to be a good move on Panasonic to not include the power supply.
 
I actually have an small old (1600mAh?) panasonic battery from my DVX days that I use on the P2 Store. Works great, and I have yet to get to the point where the battery life bars aren't all lit up.
 
Ok, you guys who think NOT getting the power supply is a good thing, wait untill your batteries get older, or you use the shorter running batteries from the DVX or other camera.

One day "IT" will happen to YOU.

The P2 store draws more voltage than the camera, due to it powering a hard drive. The types of batteries this uses, will supply 7.2 volts at a steady rate, and then drop off suddenly. After these batteries get older, or using a lower capacity battery is not a good thing, especially if you have the 8 gig cards on verify.

An 8 gig card transfer on verify takes about 18 minutes to do.
If you did this more than once, on a weak, older, lower capacity, or not fully charged battery, the constant draw may cause your battery to drop below 7 volts. If that happens, your P2 store will shut off, corrupt the footage and require you to look in the manual on how to reset it.

....... What do you mean your manual is at home, and you're on a 2 day shoot and it's the first 2 hours of the shoot?

For this reason, I advise you to ONLY use the HVX200 batteries or larger capacity ones, or have constant power to the P2 store via power supply. This problem can happen whenever the input power drops below 7 volts. This can easily happen to older, and lower capacity batteries even when they indicate a full charge.


All that being said, NOW do you think it's a good idea to NOT supply a charger/power supply.
 
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I don't think not supplying one is a good idea. I'd prefer a supply and battery to come with it for that price. For me it has not been a problem, though.

Good point about the older batteries (although mine is only 6 months). Definitely always be sure it is freshly charged before your shoot. So far I've offloaded up to six 4gb cards with verify with no problems with that battery. I suppose I could swap out a fresh 1600 beyond that. When I'm in a static shoot with an AC source, I use the supply to be safe.


Anyone know what the actual draw is from the P2 Store? I.e., how long, theoretically, will it last on a (new! fully charged!) 1600?
 
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O.K., I am trying to remember my physics lessons, but I am no Bob Diaz :D.

Now,

If the P2 Store has a normal operation amp rating of 0.8A, and a Max amp rating of 1.3A,

and If (milli Amp hour)/(continuous milli amps) = (run time),

then:

Normal operation:
1600mAh/800mA = 2 hours of operation.

"Max" operation:
1600mAh/1300mA = 1.23 hours of operation.

At 4 minutes per offload of a 4GB card (w/o verify--7 minutes with), that should give about 15 cards, worst case scenario, at a conservative 1 hour of operation.

I would feel comfortable offloading 10 cards (or six cards with verify).

Unless I am wrong, in which case I am really in for a heartache.

Where is Bob Diaz when you need him?! :furious3:



EDIT: Oh, and the DVXuser 5600 will yield 4.3 to 7 hours or so.
 
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Again, it's not so much the duration of the delivery of the voltage, but the way batteries may dip in voltage during current draw. The battery may show fully charged, but when they get old, they may not output the needed voltage to sustain the transfer. When this happened to me, it was from an older generic battery used in another panasonic camera. I measured the voltage with a load, and it only put out 7 volts.

If you have a 5 volt regulator to supply the internal hard drive, and other power supplying the control board for the P2 store (not sure the voltage on that, but it does use motion sensors and such) Having a source of only 7.2 volts puts the margin very close for supplying a constant 5 volts to the drive.

Even the optional plug in source recomended says 7.9 volts (on the battery plate near the verify button).


My bet is that with the new 16 gig cards, and as batteries get older, this will turn out to be a bigger problem due to a longer download time, and someone bound to use a weak battery.

Yesterday I almost bought a Radio Shack 8 volt power adapter for that port.
It was $10. Probably would have been the best $10 I ever spent. I didn't buy it because it was white in color and didn't match.

Currently I am still using the charger from the HVX200.
On an all day shoot, that ties up my ability to recharge my batteries, if it is powering the P2 store.
 
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DVX 100 Battery Charger & p2 Store

DVX 100 Battery Charger & p2 Store

Just wondering if the battery adapter & charger that came with my old DVX can be used to power the P2 Store. Does it provide the correct amount of current?
Thanks!
Mario.
 
Yes, I agree. For the price of the unit, not including a battery and a charger was cheap. No other possible description.
 
lpcvideo1 said:
O.K., I am trying to remember my physics lessons, but I am no Bob Diaz :D.

Now,

If the P2 Store has a normal operation amp rating of 0.8A, and a Max amp rating of 1.3A,

and If (milli Amp hour)/(continuous milli amps) = (run time),

then:

Normal operation:
1600mAh/800mA = 2 hours of operation.

"Max" operation:
1600mAh/1300mA = 1.23 hours of operation.

At 4 minutes per offload of a 4GB card (w/o verify--7 minutes with), that should give about 15 cards, worst case scenario, at a conservative 1 hour of operation.

I would feel comfortable offloading 10 cards (or six cards with verify).

Unless I am wrong, in which case I am really in for a heartache.

Where is Bob Diaz when you need him?! :furious3:



EDIT: Oh, and the DVXuser 5600 will yield 4.3 to 7 hours or so.
Click to expand...


Battery capacity is a bit like MPG in a car, it all depends on how you drive it...

Drive the car at 35 miles per hour on flat ground with the tires at the ideal pressure and your MPG looks really good. BUT, drive the car at 90 miles per hour with tires that are low in pressure and the MPG isn't so good.

There are all sorts of technical things going on here with batteries, so I'll cut to the meat of the matter...

Battery capacity is how much you can draw out of a battery until it is at zero volts. This is great for theory, but in the real world, the equipment shuts down LONG BEFORE we reach zero volts. Giving you an exact factor to use is impossible, because the discharge curves of the different batteries are different. So, as a VERY CRUDE number use 0.5 and 0.7 as possible numbers:

Battery Capacity Spec x 0.5 = Usable range (low guess)
Battery Capacity Spec x 0.7 = Usable range (high guess)
​
To be safe, take your times and multiply them by 0.5 and 0.7 for a very rough guess as to the running time.

Another issue: Let's say that we can pull a maximum of1,000ma from a battery for 1 hour (to full discharge). You might assume that if we pull 1ma, that the battery would be fully discharged in 1,000 hours. NOPE! With small currents, the capacity is higher.

Still another issue: As batteries age, their capacity drops. Even without the ageing, the capacity depends on how they are charged. A rapid pulse charge works the best compaired to a slow trickel charge.

Yes, more to drive you crazy: Temperature can have an impact on capacity.

I hope this helps....

Bob Diaz
 
BobDiaz said:
. . . as a VERY CRUDE number use 0.5 and 0.7
Click to expand...

Please don't use crude numbers with me, young man. :D

But seriously, this essentially means that if I drive my 1600mAh Yugo (though aging, she still has great discharge curves) at room temperature, with a rapid pulse charge multiplied by 0.5 and 0.7, I'll get to next year's NAB in time to see RedA?

No, but seriously seriously. I suppose that's what I intuitively did when limiting the number of cards to 6/10. I figure it's like anything in life--If a project is supposed to cost $100.00, plan on $200.00. With Bob's and Green Hornet's exhortations contrarywise, I may bop that number down a bit. If it fails, though, I can always re-copy my card. A good reason always to check the LEDs after copy to be sure no errors occurred (or power outages--or low tire pressure).

Thanks, Bob.


Marigolo said:
Just wondering if the battery adapter & charger that came with my old DVX can be used to power the P2 Store. Does it provide the correct amount of current?
Thanks!
Mario.
Click to expand...


I checked my DVX charger and it says it provides 7.8V at 1.4A (compared to the one I got with the HVX, which is 7.9V at 1.2A). The P2Store specs say the Store uses 7.9V at 1.3A max draw (0.8A "normal"). I have used the DVX charger to power it, not noticing that there was a difference. Niether charger, by the interesting way, is the same model number as the P2 Store's recommended AG-B15! I assume the 0.1V lack is not a problem? Amperage should be fine, however. [Just multiply it by 0.5 and 0.7! :Drogar-BigGrin(DBG) ]
 
Actually I thought they were cheap for notincluding a little LCD screen that could display How may cards were loaded and thumbnails from the cards for a quick visual reference.
 
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