Paul C. Buff, Inc. Technical Forum

When the CC is off "screen black". Is it still active? I find that it seems to go through batteries quickly. I do keep E640's plugged into the AC when not in use, any chance they are still talking to the CC?

thanks

j

I'm madder than H at my engineering staff about this - just informed yesterday.

Firmware changes they made resulted in about 1/10 the CC battery life, from 9 months on standby to less than a month. I was not aware of this goof up.

And, yes, by design, when the screen is black CC is still active, in standby, so it's always ready to use.

BTW, I just bought a new Sekonic L478 and used it quite lightly. The batteries were dead in 3 weeks.

We can do better than this. A firmware update to restore battery life has been written and should be available for download soon. Check with info@paulcbuff.com and please accept my apologies

thanks Paul

I'll watch out for the new firmware. I took a look at the Sekonic L478, very nice. I have a couple analog Sekonic meters sitting is drawer somewhere in the studio. Makes me a bit nostalgic about the world of sheet film and "real" photography :)

j

I usually pop the batteries out of mine when I pack up because it's too easy for the buttons to get pressed and activate the unit.

Firmware 50 was released this week, just in case you missed it. This will help with battery drain.

http://www.paulcbuff.com/fw-cc.php

I've been waiting to see if there were any problems updating... look OK so far?

Any features or noticeable changes (other than battery life) that I would see?

thanks

j

I have seen only two failures thus far (one won't load, but still works. The other is unresponsive), and many reports of successful loadings. I don't think firmware updates will ever be 100% perfect for any product (of any type from any manufacturer). The main thing is to follow the instructions explicitly.

>I have seen only two failures thus far

Were these CC's or E640's?

Worst case scenario.... what's my downtime on fixing either for a firmware failure? just planning ahead.

thx

These were both Cyber Commanders. I will need to check the turnaround time for this type of failure.

All E640's and CC's updated successfully.

Thanks to David for the tips.

The main thing was to reload the PCBUFF firmware folder to the MicroSD card for each CC and E640 that needs the update. As a precaution the file on the card is changed to prevent you from reinstalling the same firmware (which would be bad) on the same device. As a result you need to delete the firmware from the card after updating and replace it with a fresh copy of the PCBUFF folder before each update/device.