SRW1 Not Powering?

Mike Krumlauf

Mike Krumlauf

Award Winning Filmmaker
So I have something strange going on and I might be coming here too soon for help, but better to be proactive and get a second opinion asap right? So, I brought my F23/SRW1 to work today as it was a slow day and the Hyatt i do A/V out of has a beautiful 12th floor ballroom that has a near 360 degree view of denver and the front range (perfect place to test a camera). I got some great shots, everything was working fine. I noticed the battery was getting low so i powered the unit down (i power down SRW first and then camera body and vice versa when i power up, and to note, i powered the SRW down with a tape in it which i guess according to the manual is bad.. i force ejected it out tonight). My buddy wanted to see some of the footage i got so i figured id have enough power to show him some of the tape.. camera fired up just fine.. when i went to power the SRW1 it made that click noise when it turns on, the buttons and screen on the control panel lit up for like half a sec and then it clicked and turned off and thats how its been ever since. I've had the battery on the charger for awhile (its still not full.. its a 220wh 14.8v battery and currently its saying its at "16.5v") and ive tried many times to power up the deck and all i get is a light up click noise and then blackout click noise off. The reason I say i might be coming here early is I just need to charge the battery to full and then test, i just find it strange that all of the LED indicators are lit up, it seems like my battery "should" have enough juice to fire this puppy up so i can capture but no. I am planning on buying a AC adapter for it this weekend but if there is by chance an issue, what do you guys think it is and what could have caused it?
 
Update: powering on with a full battery gives me the same results. It won’t turn on, so what’s going on with this thing?
 
The worst case scenario - which is something you do not want to hear (no one does) - is it's fried.

Was the correct amount of power provided to it?
 
Well here is some good news. the seller is letting me return it and i also might have tracked down another one for a reasonable price.

In terms of power, i was using a Dynacore 220Wh 14.8v gold mount battery with it and the f23. I got 7min worth of footage, properly shut it off and then went to fire it up and it attempts to boot and just gives up not 1sec in. I don't think it is fried given its "attempt" at booting. but, given i have the window via ebay to return im just doing that as i cant afford buying more crap for it to see if it works only for the chance of it stil not working and then being out more money you know? If I could find a gemini 4:4:4 full kit for under $500 i'd just invest in that at this point but im not that lucky. lol
 
If the camera is still powered on but the recorder dies, it rules out my first thought that the battery wasn't up to the task and was doing some kind of current limit/thermal cutout, but if you have access to a 12v 4 pole power supply at work or something, it might be worth trying before sending it back.
If you plug headphones in, does it give you any kind of alarm tone before shutting off, that might indicate something?
 
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What is the amp rating of your battery? As I recall the camera and srw1 pull a lot of amps and most batteries I looked at for mine were low in the max amp specs. Might be something to look into.
 
Im seriously considering going tapeless but i have to do so within reason. I have another SRW1 "on hold" for tomorrow but im really doing my research. I've always loved the blackmagic shuttle but that will reduce me to 4:2:2 color.. honestly the only thing that can get 4:4:4 out of this camera that i can afford right now is the SRW.. granted, would love the camera to be lighter which if i didnt stay with an SRW would happen... i also do not want a recorder thats a screen.. the thing i like about the shuttle and the ki pro mini i had for ages are they are just recorders.. i dont always want an LCD screen on my camera and im getting an HDVF unit tomorrow as well. i was looking at a codex m but thats just out of my price range.. its either pray this doesnt happen again and go for the other srw, or sacrifice color space and get a shuttle with a really nice SSD. im sure i could figure some neat little mount for the shuttle to go onto where the SRW would :b
 
Whatever budget you save getting the deck will be blown in the cost of HDCAM-SR tapes. And just how are you offloading those tapes into an edit system?
 
Does anyone how how many AMPS exactly the F23/SRW1 combo pull? My battery through its proper mount can do 15A but through Dtap i cant pull more than 10amps max
 
Mike Krumlauf said:
Does anyone how how many AMPS exactly the F23/SRW1 combo pull? My battery through its proper mount can do 15A but through Dtap i cant pull more than 10amps max
Click to expand...

The camera and viewfinder pulls 56 watts and the SRW-1 pulls 60 watts. I didn't find a specific amp rating but based off the watts the camera would pull 8 amps at 24p, more at higher frame rates.
 
well i went ahead and bought a replacement SRW combo piece from bitnaut. Im sure this one will work out better for me :). I also have an HDVF200 on the way as well.
 
dhessel said:
The camera and viewfinder pulls 56 watts and the SRW-1 pulls 60 watts. I didn't find a specific amp rating but based off the watts the camera would pull 8 amps at 24p, more at higher frame rates.
Click to expand...

does the SRW1 piece have replaceable fuses in it? I had just shot 24fps material and 2min or so of 1fps over 24 with it and thats it on the day it stopped working. im returning the one thats not working right today and getting my money back thankfully.
 
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Ok, i'd like someone with the math brains to help me figure this out so i know im givng the camera enough power.. My battery is 14.8V/220Wh (dynacore), I am going into the camera via LEMO using an anton bauer plate. My battery is able to output max 150W @ 15AMPS... if all this is going from my battery directly into the lemo from the plate (not using a dtap to lemo as i noticed dtap does 10 Amps max) this should safely power an F23 with a docked SRW1 safely correct? I know Anton Bauer made that big brick battery for the camera but thats not a mobile battery. Several projects have gone handheld with the F23/35 using the SRW so what is the fail safe way to power this monster for a mobile operation?!
 
I should hope someone more knowledgeable chimes in here, but as far as I can see you should be good based on those specs.
But the thing is, you're putting a bit of trust in Dynacore that they're not fudging those numbers to make the batteries sound better on paper.

The 15Amp 150w thing would mean that it can either pump all that power through the big ABauer gold connectors to a load, or a mixture of loads across AB and d-tap (i.e a camera docked directly to battery and some accessories using d-tap), whereas the dtap connectors combined likely only do 10A.
I don't know why 150w and 15A are listed together because when we talk about current and voltage we calculate values with Ohms law, P=VI, power = Voltage x current.
So in theory if your battery is fresh off the charger and dumping 14.8v, and if it can truly sustain a load of 15 amps, then that means it can deliver 222 watts.
But as the battery drains down to 12 or so volts that power output is going to go down.
It seems unlikely to me that it could deliver 220 watts but who knows, maybe it can.
Without a proper detailed datasheet or manual ( I can't find any online) it could be anything.
I would imagine it's current limited or something like that to keep it at 150w.

If the SRW is 60w at idle and the camera is somewhere around the 50w mark then we can assume that you're probably wanting around 110-120w of sustained power output which should be achievable even if you're sucking out of a single d-tap that is limited to 10A.
Even at 12v, that still means that you can supply 120w.

What all of this doesn't take into account is anything weird like inrush current, where on powering on there may be a big momentary draw of power.
But still it doesn't seem too likely that this would be a problem.
Things like this mean that you always want to try and provide a big of wiggle room with how much power you can supply, as you'd hate to be floating close to the point where the thing may shut itself off for over current or thermal or something.

Again, hopefully someone else chimes in here.
 
Finally got a response from Sony and just for anyone interested.. the issue had nothing to do with power. It was due to dried out caps, so it was infact just old and met its time. unless someone replaces those caps its junk now.. so that gives me hope on my end with the new SRW i got. was not a user error on my part, phew.
 
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