Paul C. Buff, Inc. Technical Forum

so did a shoot last night and played this morning with my 2 einsteins and for some reason the strobes wont go off sometimes? i have to push the left button on the commander like im taking a reading until they both go off, sometimes taking 2 or 3 pushes, and then once they go off i can take pictures... could the commander be going into a sleep mode or something? batteries going dead? is there any way to know when its in sleep mode or is there a battery meter?

also, i keep trying to turn off the optic trigger on the strobes and it keeps turning back on? i push the function button until i get the optic option and push up arrow till it says off... then walk away and next time i go over it back on? is there something i need to push to save a setting? its turning back on even though the strobes where never turned off?

The only sleep mode would be the screen shutting off, which would not affect the triggering via the foot. If the batteries are low, the screen would show "low batt" where "REFRESH" usually appears. Did you make any changes to the head without setting in the CC prior to this happening? Are the lights properly identified in the CC?



This would need to be set in the Cyber Commander. If a change is made to the head, but not the Cyber Commander, then the CC will take over and oer ride the head, i.e. turn the slave eye back on.

No the only changes I tried to make was turning the slave eye off... I guess ill need to figure out how to make these changes from the CC. Bit as far as them no triggering I have no idea what could be the cause. I have the CC connected to my camera with a cable not the hot shoe since I dont have the connector needed for my Sony. Would that have anything to do with it? It would also happen when I for sure knew the CC was on cuz the screen was actually on. And the strokes where within 10 to 12 feet from me so its not distance or something like that?

Do you have the vertical blue bars for the lights on the graph on the Cyber Commander? Screen on or off would not make a difference, as the hotshoe and sync terminals are a hard circuit, only turning on momentarily when triggered. At this point I would recommend calling in and talking to David or Joe, as it would be faster and easier talking real-time.

ya i had the little blue bars... i have them set up in our home studio now so ill have to play with thwm and see if i can reproduce the error and see try find whats causing it so i can explain it better before i call...

Mine did the same thing a few times. The last time I used it it gave me a low batt warning even with fresh batteries and wouldn't fire my Einsteins at all. I called tech support and they told me to remove the micro sd card. It has worked fine since.