Paul C. Buff, Inc. Technical Forum

Had a shoot tonight that went in the crapper. My Alien Bees would not fire with the Cyber but each time I put it on my camera, the bees would fire in rapid fire mode and then get burned out. I'm not sure Im describing what happened properly but the bottom line is I couldnt get my lights to work.

Any ideas from the tech gurus on here how to troubleshoot this and figure out what went wrong? I have the most basic cyber commander transmitter and its always worked fine before. Nothing's changed. Help? (I ended up having to shoot the whole thing available light. at 6 PM. yeah, there IS no light, just my modeling lights. sigh)

this is the light I have: http://www.paulcbuff.com/b800.php

and this is the radio transmitter/receiver:

http://www.paulcbuff.com/cst.php (when I put this on the hot shoe is when I had the problems)

http://www.paulcbuff.com/csr.php

and I was using a canon mark 2 camera.

TIA for your help!

Allegra

It was likely the battery in the CST was virtually dead. This was crashing the processor, causing the lights to fire. You can press the test button on the CST, and if it does not blink or blinks 3 times, then the battery is low.

If it blinks once, then it is a good battery, and was maybe cold which lowers the voltage. This lower voltage will make the battery essentially dead until the battery warms up.

hmmm, battery on the cst. didnt think about that and yes, it does not blink when test button is pressed but it DOES fire the bee.

It is my understanding current versions of the CST don't allow this rapid fire on low battery issue. I know how scary it is, having seen it myself a couple of times.

I just had the same issue the other day. Very embarrassing in front of customer. I have two CST's. Mine are about 1.5 years old. Is there any chance these can be rev'd to the new circuitry or swapped out?

I don't think we will be able to swap the units out, however you would need to contact customer service for a definitive answer.

Since the CST's consume batteries slowly, I think I'll just check them several times a year. I have a few data points here that will help me discern the health of the battery with the use of a volt meter:

3.21V ==> new battery
2.76V ==> CST still works
2.74V ==> CST not working

These measurements were performed when the batteries haven't been used for a day. The voltage can dip right after a few actuations of the CST especially when the battery is old.

The LED's will also tell you about battery health. When you press the test button, the red LED will blink once when the battery is good. The LED will blink three times when the battery is low, and not at all when the battery is virtually dead. It is at the latter stage where the rapid fire is likely to occur.

It is also important to remember very cold or very hot batteries will have a lower voltage than those at "room temperature". This could mean inoperability in the cold, where they work fine in warmer environments.

Something is not right with your answer. I decided to test this with my 2.76V battery. I pressed the test button a little over 100 times until the LED no longer blinked. I never saw it blink 3 times while hitting the test button. It only blinked once for each push of the test button.

Instead, what I noticed is that upon reinserting the battery into the compartment and closing it, the LED blinked 3 times if the battery was weak and only 2 times with a fresh battery.

Does this sound right, or is my firmware different?

Now I know that I have at least 100 shots left when a battery is at 2.76V at room temperature. But, hearing your suggestion to use the LED as an indicator is much more convenient than getting out a volt meter. I'm curious if anyone at PCB knows about how many shots the CST would get when it is at the threshold of blinking 3 times?

This low battery LED feature is present in all battery operated CyberSync devices (except Cyber Commander who has a different display).

The CST will act a little differently than the others normally since it uses a lithium battery. The low battery indicator uses voltage to determine battery life. Lithium batteries tend to maintain their voltage until the end of their life when they then drop fairly rapidly. This leads to a shorter than "normal" window of time for it to blink the low battery warning. Further more, if you were pressing the test button rapidly, the battery may not have had a chance to recover from no blink voltage to three blink voltage.

In either case, you should get no blinks before it gets to the point of rapid firing.