Paul C. Buff, Inc. Technical Forum

Michelle,
I don't know about battery life yet. I did the update in the wee hours of the morning, and I have been playing with the CC all day at work (like a kid with a toy). I have used AAA "Energizer Ultimate Lithium" batteries from the start, and battery life has never been an issue for me. They seem to offer the voltage curve, and capacity that suits the CC just fine. The current set of batteries have been in there for several weeks at least. At the end of this day, I have not encountered any problems from the update.

Well,
Just got off the phone with tech support and I am sending in my CC. This is the first issue I have had with Paul Buff stuff and the first time I've had to use support. I had always heard that the support was good, but now I know first hand how well they take care of their customers. Kudos to this company for doing the "little things" that really make the difference"

Regards,
Peter

Peter, thanks for the feedback!

For clarification to others: this is likely an isolated hardware issue more so than firmware.

I too have tried reformatting and reinstalling the new firmware. The first time, no problem starting up. After a day or two the unit died. Reinstalled and it worked fine for a day, then dead. Several iterations of this procedure and now it will not do anything with the card installed, and is erratic without the card.

Channel three went dead on one receiver. Changed to channel 5 and it worked for one or two flashes, now dead.

Is this me or are there other known issues? Is this system ever going to work? I'm going to have to go back to manual, I guess, until I figure this out.

I have 3 AB1600, an AB ring, CyberCommander and 4 + ac receivers.

Have you tried with a new card? It could be the card was corrupted beyond formatting.

How do you know which firmware version you are running?

Determining which FW veersion is already installed on your system is always published in the instructions. Below is an excerpt from the Cyber Commander instructions:


This firmware update is for Cyber Commanders with version 22 and 27 firmware.

Cyber Commanders with version 29 firmware will not require this update. To determine which firmware your Cyber Commander has, please refer to the following:

•All Cyber Commanders with serial numbers 001001 - 001347 shipped with version 22.
•All Cyber Commanders with serial numbers 001348 - 001914 were shipped with version 27.
•All Cyber Commanders with serial numbers 001915 or higher were shipped with version 29 and no update is required.
•By removing a battery and reinstalling, the Firmware version will flash on the bottom of the screen for approximately 2 seconds.

Well, I got my CC today (along with my 4 Einsteins). It already has v29 loaded. I guess I need to take a class in the dang thing: I expected to turn it on and find it intuitive to use, but kinda the opposite of that. So I went thru the manual, and am still finding it weird. Seems like some random menu steps to get started, and there aren't really any examples of setups and how to set them up in the CC. For the future, a manual that has some standard setups (like 4 einsteins that I want to control individually) and how to get that into the CC would be super.

Even better: if I turn it on, select an "acquire" command, and it finds all my controllable lights and gives me a default control set up with each light independently adjustable that would be super. I could Save it, then it would power up to that every time. If I added new lights, or went to work in a studio with their einsteins, I could re-perform the "aquire".

So, until I can muddle thru getting this to work well (which I am sure it will--just not user-friendly to get to that point), I have a new CC on my desk, and am firing my Einsteins with my CST, manually adjusting each one from the back panels. sigh.

the menu steps are not random, but quite necessary. You need to make sure the freq. matches on all Einsteins and the CC, and that each Einstein is set to its unique channel. This is very important for the system to work properly. Then go to Open Memory, then select studio, then you should see 4 bars (if you are using 4 Einsteins) appear. They are already spec'd as Einstein. There should be an addendum (included) to the CC and Einstein manuals that detail this further.

I didn't mean that the steps are random or unnecessary. It appears to me that the menu order is counter-intuitive: First, go to the bottom right column of the menu, do stuff, then go to the top right of the menu, do stuff, then go to the next to bottom on the left column, do stuff, then go up one.

Basically, the UI is not as friendly as it could be, is all. The Einstein controls are intuitive, obvious, and simple. The CC is confusing.

One idea: if there were a New Setup menu item, you select it, and it walks you thru step by step to created the set up, and when you finish the New Setup Menu steps, you are ready to shoot (no go to upper right, lower left menus, it just takes you thru it.)