Paul C. Buff, Inc. Technical Forum

...and they start off with a noticeably higher voltage than regular alkalines. The brand new ones I purchased this evening for the CC both measured (no-load) around 1.79v. I checked two brand new "plain" Duracell alkalines (both a 2A and 3A) and found them both to be 1.514v.

Before installing the new lithiums, I did a little testing with the old batteries. Basically, I monitored the combined voltage while doing lots of things to put a drain on them. Was able to cause a couple of reboots without trying too hard, and the voltage reading (at the battery terminals) was 2.86 and 2.84 for the two times it happened. Saw some other strangeness as well, including one light setting getting partially munged, which also seemed to cause that light to stop responding. I can provide more details if anyone's interested.

After installing the new lithiums and reloading my settings from the SD card, I've used the unit for several hours now with no problems whatsoever from the CC. Just as I mentioned before, I'm still convinced that it was simply a case of low batteries causing the symptoms I saw.

My recommendation to everyone: don't even bother with putting alkalines in a Cyber Commander. You'd be replacing them so often that you might as well have bought lithiums to begin with.

Disclaimer: I have no connection with Paul C. Buff, Inc., other than having sent them lots of nice money in exchange for lots of nice lighting equipment.

Just one detail: can you elaberate on the word "munged" please?
Also just to add to this post topic. I have never seen this behavier from my CC. When my Alkas run low, the CC warns me with a red "LOW BATTERY" warning text at the bottom right portion of the CC, giving me time to change out before a complete shutdown.

RMS

That's interesting -- I've never seen a "low battery" warning, even when intentionally running the batteries down. Didn't even know the system had that capability.

About the munged light setting:

While testing things, I went through a cycle of refreshing my light settings repeatedly using the right joystick. This is clearly not something you'd normally do, but it seemed like a good way of placing a drain on the batteries. After doing this approximately 10-15 times, I started noticing that the bar for one light in particular showed red every time I tried to refresh. I believe this indicates that the light in question didn't respond properly to the attempted communication, but I'm not 100% sure on that.

I checked the light settings for that light as defined in the CC, and noticed that MODEL MODE had somehow changed to OFF (the actual model light was on, despite this). I tried to change the setting, but it wouldn't move away from "OFF". On a hunch, I then checked the light specification for that channel. Sure enough, it was now showing AB400 instead of what it was originally defined as (AB800). I reset the light specs to their appropriate definitions, then went back to check the light settings. Apparently changing the light spec cleared out the other settings as well, and I was now able to set the model mode to TRACK, which is what I normally use. Went back to the main screen, then started refreshing again.

Refreshing worked as expected at that point, at least until the CC rebooted several attempts after that as the voltage level dropped.

Thanks for your detailed explanation. I had, in the past, a similar experience with my two WLs with CSRB+s and one Einstein setup on my CC. I was changing settings for the WLs via the CC and noticed my Einstein had also been changed, only to find out that I had inadvertently set the left joystick to change the Einstein. I seem to do this once in a while, not so much with changing power output, but making changes in light setup menu, so I now look a little closer at the actions I perform for setting up the lights on the CC. Also I've pushed the "EASY SET" button on the back of the Einstein somehow by accident and that caused a little confusion LOL. Thanks again.

RMS

That makes sense, RMS. In my case, though, I was nowhere near the light settings or specs menus until I discovered something was wrong. All I was doing was repeatedly using Refresh to keep the CC busy. At some point in the process, the CC's internal data for the light became corrupted. It was easy enough to fix, but I guess the "trick" is that you have to realize that the light settings are corrupted in the first place. The persistent red bar on refreshing was my best clue in this case.

This begs lots of questions, but I think they're mostly for the CC engineer(s) to work on. :)

The Cyber Commander is an ambitious first-generation product. As such, it comes with great features as well as some quirks that the user needs to adapt to. All-in-all, I'm very happy with my Cyber Commander and you'd have to be very convincing to talk me out of it. It's an integral part of my shooting now, and I can honestly say that my work is better for it. I'm sure the future generations will be even better!

This I have to really agree on. The CC has its problems BUT it has made me so much more efficient and consistent in my studio that I will never give up on it.

I believe the reboot issue has been identified and is being addressed.

Oh yeah - I knew you could do it. Thanks!!

Yes, go to FUNCTION MENU and scroll down to the ADVANCED CONFIGURATION. Red highlight the CYBERCOMMANDER SETUP. The BACKLIGHT % will increase or decrease the brightness of the screen. Using the LEFT joystick push up or down to change the % of brightness.
TIMEOUT = how long you wish the screen to stay on. To increase or descrease the time use the LEFT joystick and push LEFT or RIGHT.
As you may well know the higher the BACKLIGHT or TIMEOUT setting the faster the battery drain..

That's great news! Looking forward to hearing about the fix whenever the solution is available.

Thanks!