advice on powering the Manhattan HD monitor

moldcad

moldcad

Veteran
Last year, I purchased a Manhattan HD monitor (along with a Tekkeon PowerALL battery) to be used in those important gigs with my EX1; so far it's doing well. I am still having problems with powering it though, and would like to kindly ask you for help / suggestions on a solution...

Velcro-ing the Tekkeon battery to the back of the monitor doesn't work for me, as - for some reason - the battery interferes with the Component input signal, and the picture is gone. Therefore, I need to place the battery away from the monitor; I'm using a tripod setup with rails that protrude back from the camera long enough to mount the battery there. However, the original DC power cable between the battery and the monitor is too short sometimes, so I'd like to make my own lead - what is the type of the plug at battery side of it? Is it proprietary, or can I buy it somewhere (apart from Tekkeon themselves - a 3' lead is just $7.5, but shipping to Poland $120 minimum)?

Another question: sometimes, when I'm using a light, I need to mount another big battery on my tripod rig anyway (I'm using PAG bricks); they have two power outs and it'd be ideal if I could use one of them to power up my HD monitor, rather than be tied to he Tekkeon battery... Unfortunately, my PAG's output is 14.8V - too high for the Manhattan HD monitor to feed it directly (it's said to need 9-12V). Now, I'm completely lame as far as electricity goes; can you tell me how to decrease the voltage to some 10-12V by preparing a special cable for this purpose (using some resistor or alike...)

Thanks for your help
 
Piotr, I will try to answer, I am not sure you will like my answers ;-)
The reason your Tekkeon kills your monitor is most probably the monitor does not have much shielding to protect from the battery voltage regulator generated electromagnetic fields. By moving the battery away you reduce that interference. If you take a picture of the cable and the plugs, may be somebody will recognize what you need for the new longer cable. Shipping to Poland could be cheaper if you have friends in US or Europe to order and send you one :-)
To answer your second question, reducing voltage from 14 V down to 12V using a resistor or any other simple means would cause that regulator to get real hot, draining your battery faster, and contributing to global warming... To do it using a modern efficient electronic voltage regulator would cost you more to buy one than you would probably want to spend.
The bottom line is the Manhattan LCD monitor is inexpensive for a good reason, it is engineered in such a way that it is very limited in real life use. One would expect from a 12V device to accept a range of voltages up to 16V. Look at the 12V cameras (including yours), portable monitors (except the Manhattan), and such. They all are designed from the ground up for a range of working voltages, so the user does not have to deal with the headaches you ended up with :-(
 
Thanks Alex for the answer - you were right, not very good news for me at all :)
Well, it seems like I'll have to ask somebody to buy the Tekkeon 3' cable for me, and send it in a plain envelope!
 
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