About six months ago I decided to jump into the studio and lighting world of photography and bought a complete PCB outfit, 3 b800's, vagabond lithium, cybersyncs, cyber commander, stands, soft boxes, grids, you name it. All have been working flawlessly to date except one, the cyber commander. When I first got the cyber commander, it worked great and I was very happy with it. However, about once a day when I would go to meter flash it would flash a white screen, reboot, and lose all my light configurations. At first I just wrote it off as a minor glitch and waited for the next firmware update. When version 32 was released, I quickly, and properly, updated only to find that it now did it about 20 times a day, but luckily I didn't lose my light configurations every time. This kept it at the same level of annoyance but unfortunately being a full time student and photographer I didn't have the time to deal with it and just hoped for yet another firmware update that would solve my woes. Finally, version 36 came out, figured this would do the trick, I promptly and properly updated my cyber commander hoping it would fix everything. It rendered it completely un-usable. Now, all it does is flash that same white screen, say "Cyber Commander, FW Ver 36", go black, then do it all over again. I don't know if it will erase my light setups like it previously did because it never gets to that point.
Finally I found some time to call in and try to solve this, turns out, since I'm in Canada, id have to pay to ship it both ways. Plus whatever outrageous brokerage fees, duties etc. adding up to the cost of what it would be just to buy a new one. Not to mention what I've already paid/would have to pay to rent pocket wizards for the added time I'd be out a trigger while it was being repaired. Just so I wouldn't have to turn down or reschedule clients losing even more thats already spoken for by school.
So I guess what im asking is are there any solutions? because right now I simply cant afford to lose the time and money it would take to send this thing in. Ive already tried putting the screen above 50% brightness on the old firmware versions and i would try on ver. 36 but it wont let me get anywhere near that far. If you guys have any other suggestions I would be grateful but if not I guess I just cut my losses and move on.
Unfortunate that this had to leave a sour taste in my mouth because all the other PCB products have been phenomenal. Just bad luck that the key piece had to fail I guess.
Thanks In advance for any help and sorry for the somewhat rant, just frustrating.
Cheers, Scott
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