FS7: SONY FS7 Anton Bauer Digital 90 V Mount battery/charger issues

M

msjenkin

Member
I recently purchased the anton bauer digital 90 Vmount battery to power my Sony FS7. Also purchased the AB dual performance charger.
I am new to Anton bauer and v mounts in general so I am not sure how to diagnose the issues I am having.

I charged the battery once with no issues. I used the battery and put it back on the charger.
Instead of charging the battery, the charger lcd display shows a yellow border around the battery icon and --% instead of the charging percentage. When this happened, I thought it was an issue with the dual charger. So, I sent it back to B&H and exchanged it for a new charger, same model, Dual performance charger. Well the new charger came in today and the same thing is happening, yellow border around battery icon and --%.
I spoke with anton bauer previously and they said they are working on a manual for both devices as there is not one currently. So i have been having trouble finding out what is wrong.

Again, I am new to these batteries so it could be something obvious i am not aware of.

I attached some pics below.

20150501_151510.jpg
I was able to navigate to this menu with the "touch screen" which by the way is barely a touch screen at all. It does not seem to be calibrated properly. When i press the screen, I see an indent about a half inch away from where i am tapping. Very strange.
It is mostly unresponsive, but sometimes will take me to the system settings screen which is different than the one posted above. But it seems random and very laggy.

Has anyone else had issues like these with this charger?

20150501_143411.jpg



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I'm not sure of a solution to your issue but personally, I'd return those if you could. Those batteries are utterly gigantic for only being 90wh and the charger/touchscreen is big and looks like a gimmick. While PAGlinks are a bit more expensive ($400 for a 96wh on Adorama) the charger looks to be about the same price ($800), the PAGlinks can piggyback to charge up to 8 batteries on a dual charger. The batteries are significantly smaller than those giant Anton Bauers and PAG makes an awesome little micro charger for traveling. Also, I'd get the PowerHub (four D-taps that can be swapped for Hirose or other power connectors, as well as a 5v USB power port).

I've been super happy with my PAGlinks.
 
Nearly bought this charger for my digital 90 gold mounts but got a good deal on a dual 2722 which works great. That's disappointing about the touch screen, seems like Anton is really falling behind other manufacturers, and I agree about the new batteries being oversized.
 
Steadicam Ops are all over A/B for changing the design. Cases on the new design are huge and often don't fit on existing rigs. To their credit Anton Bauer is still producing the Dionic 90 HC batteries in the old casing with the old innards. You can also buy generic batteries with gold mounts and Vlock mounts. One such outfit is Batteries for Broadcast.

http://batteries4broadcast.com/

There is also the Switronix stuff amongst a host of other manufacturers.

The PAG batteries that stack DO NOT charge concurrently.
 
Paglink batteries are excellent. When stacked they don't charge concurrently but they do charge sequentially. You can use a dual charger and charge at least 8 batteries during any overnight charge session. 4 batteries on each position / channel. Size is great. It will be interesting g to see how long Anton Bauer will produce the dionic 90 batts.

MS if you are close to the NYC area I can arrange a demo of PAG batteries.

How long did you leave the battery on the charger? Just curious.
 
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Andrew Stone said:
Steadicam Ops are all over A/B for changing the design. Cases on the new design are huge and often don't fit on existing rigs. To their credit Anton Bauer is still producing the Dionic 90 HC batteries in the old casing with the old innards. You can also buy generic batteries with gold mounts and Vlock mounts. One such outfit is Batteries for Broadcast.

http://batteries4broadcast.com/

There is also the Switronix stuff amongst a host of other manufacturers.

The PAG batteries that stack DO NOT charge concurrently.
Click to expand...

If they did charge concurrently, you'd have 4 batteries at 25% in the same amount of time you'd have 1 battery at 100%... I'd rather have the latter. Same power, less battery swapping. Plus you can take the one charged battery to shoot with while the other three sit on the charger. Of course, the major benefit is when you can't babysit the charger, such as going to bed after a long shoot. You can wake up with 8 batteries charged, whereas in the past I've had to wake up in the middle of the night to swap out v-mounts to make sure we had power for the next day. You can go through a lot of v-mounts in a day when you've got camera, LEDs, monitors, etc. all running off them.
 
I've used Anton Bauers since day one and have always liked them, BUT A/B is a victim of being a Vitec company. If you look at a lot of the design changes that have occurred, our professional gear is taking on the design and looks of consumer equipment: it's designed to look friendly, inviting and "cool". Just look at the LitePanel Astra's and the new A/B batts and chargers. They all look like Fisher Price designed them for little kids to use instead of TV and production professionals. I'm all for a good design and looking cool, BUT form needs to follow function.
 
Thanks, but Im in colorado. Are paglinks like Anton Bauer in that you need to keep them on the charger when not in use?
 
HD Gear Guru said:
Paglink batteries are excellent. When stacked they don't charge concurrently but they do charge sequentially. You can use a dual charger and charge at least 8 batteries during any overnight charge session. 4 batteries on each position / channel. Size is great. It will be interesting g to see how long Anton Bauer will produce the dionic 90 batts.

MS if you are close to the NYC area I can arrange a demo of PAG batteries.

How long did you leave the battery on the charger? Just curious.
Click to expand...


I left it on the charger for several hours with no changes to the status of the battery. I was still unable to navigate the touchscreen. I boxed it up and will be returning the battery and charger to B&H.
 
Is the battery getting hot? I had to send two HyTron 140's back last fall. One was 8 months old and one had maybe two or three cycles on it. On would indicate that it was fully charged in 30-60 mins and the display would show like eight hours runtime on it(the 8 month old) , but it had no juice and the other(with 2-3 cycles on it) would just never charge, just get very hot. I tried running diagnostics on them and using different charges, but to no avail. It took at least a month to get them back and A/B "couldn't" tell me what they did or what the issue was. They said they couldn't figure out which tech(s) serviced them or find any notes. They just said they were serviced under warranty. I was very disappointed with that experience. It was like having your car just stop running and having it towed to the dealership and they get it running again, but "can't" tell you why it died or what they did to make it run again. Makes it hard to 100% trust them again. I actually marked those two batts with gaff tape so I can watch them a little more carefully when they make it on the camera in the rotation.
 
msjenkin said:
Thanks I was looking into those before I went with the AB, I'll give them a second look.
Click to expand...
I've been using an AB type battery (non V-lock) on my FS7 from the git go with Zero issues. In fact I'm using the same lithium batteries I used on my XDCAM. Camera doesn't recognize the brand, which is generic but it does recognize the voltage value. My batteries are simple. They range from the 90's to the 190's. The 160's are the ones I use because I also power ancillary devices like a Zaxom audio link and my Convergent 7Q+. I use a V-lock to Gold top converter with no problems. My batteries are simple. A little led shows how much charge is left. No read out. I need batteries that have D-tap out so these work fine. They are from Synergistic Battery but there are lots of other companies selling them as well.
Not sure AB big boys with all their fancy charging notions is necessary, IMHO!
 
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allenfacemire said:
I've been using an AB type battery (non V-lock) on my FS7 from the git go with Zero issues. In fact I'm using the same lithium batteries I used on my XDCAM. Camera doesn't recognize the brand, which is generic but it does recognize the voltage value. My batteries are simple. They range from the 90's to the 190's. The 160's are the ones I use because I also power ancillary devices like a Zaxom audio link and my Convergent 7Q+. I use a V-lock to Gold top converter with no problems. My batteries are simple. A little led shows how much charge is left. No read out. I need batteries that have D-tap out so these work fine. They are from Synergistic Battery but there are lots of other companies selling them as well.
Not sure AB big boys with all their fancy charging notions is necessary, IMHO!
Click to expand...


So you have had no issues with these batteries and the extension unit? Only thing is that the camera doesn't recognize the brand?
How much do the batteries cost?
 
FYI, I've been using four A/B Digital 90 batteries with my FS7 since the day I got my XDCA extension unit. No problems at all with the batteries or the quad charger. Been running my Litepanels lights with those batteries too, and no problems there either.

The camera detects the A/B batteries as if they were Sony batteries. I get remaining capacity in minutes (not voltage) and I can see how many times they have been charged, etc. on the Status page.
 
Andrew Stone said:
Does the battery work when you put it on a camera or anything else that needs 12V power? In other words, is their any juice in the battery?

Reason I am asking is the traditional Anton Bauer LCD power displays will show a blank display when fully charged and after it is been sitting on the charger in a full state. When you place it on a device with a power draw, all of a sudden the display starts to work and shows as full of juice and how much time is left to power said device.
Click to expand...

Yea it did have juice, the battery had a digital display for battery life, it stayed on 26%. It did power the camera. When I returned it to the charger I started to see those issues and the percentage never changed.
 
Doug Jensen said:
FYI, I've been using four A/B Digital 90 batteries with my FS7 since the day I got my XDCA extension unit. No problems at all with the batteries or the quad charger. Been running my Litepanels lights with those batteries too, and no problems there either.

The camera detects the A/B batteries as if they were Sony batteries. I get remaining capacity in minutes (not voltage) and I can see how many times they have been charged, etc. on the Status page.
Click to expand...


Doug,
I saw your FS7 videos on vimeo, I saw you had the Digital 90 AB on your setup, thats what made me purchase because I couldnt really find any reviews anywhere else. If you have had no troubles with them it makes me either think that I was doing something wrong, or that I just had defective equipment. But I exchanged the dual charger through B&H and got a new one, still having issues. Maybe it was the battery that was the problem? Also I was still unable to effectively navigate the touchscreen, it was very laggy and unresponsive. How is the touchscreen on the quad?
At one point I did get the touchscreen to respond and it said the battery status was "rejuvenate" which made me think that I left the battery off the charger too long. But I had it back on the charger for several hours with no changes to its status.
 
I'm inclined to believe you have a faulty charger or batteries because I have had zero problems, and I don't think there is really anything you can be doing wrong. The touch screen responds immediately to my commands, but it doesn't do much. If I tap one of the four battery icons I get a page with data about that battery, but there is no other functionality that I can see. But that's all I need. Have you tried tech support at A/B? I've never seen a rejuvenate message or anything else like that. Sorry I can't be of more help.
 
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