Paul C. Buff, Inc. Technical Forum

I have a small studio setup in my condo that includes 4 AB800s with CSR+'s, a CST on my camera, and a Cyber Commander that I use to control the lights.

I've been working with this setup for the past few months, and use the lighting equipment fairly heavily 3-4 times/week shooting small products for a consumer products company. In all this time, I've only had an occasional misfire or communication issue with the CC. Tonight, for the first time, I noticed that I couldn't set my lights with the CC. Thinking my batteries might be low, I replaced them, but still wasn't able to shoot.

What followed was about an hour of essentially wasted time troubleshooting. One of the things I discovered in that time was that I could establish communication between the CSR+ and the CC only if they were separated by no more than a couple inches. This proved to be the clue that prompted me to try what I should have at the very beginning: changing the frequency of all the devices.

Until tonight, I've never had a reason to change the frequency setting. It's been on 5 the entire time I've had this setup, and I've never experienced problems with it before. For some unknown reason, though, channel 5 is now totally unusable for me (I tried going back to it and the problems persisted). My only guess is that one of my close neighbors is using some kind of rf equipment that clobbers that frequency, as I haven't added/changed anything in my residence that has any kind of wireless capabilities.

The moral of the story: if you have communication issues with a similar setup, try changing the frequency first! You'll save yourself some time. Sure wish I had done it sooner.

Just thought I'd share a tip.

I had communication problems right away between my new CC, CST and the 2 CSXCVs on my new Einsteins.

A quick call to Technical Support was all it took-- they recommend using either frequency 5 or 10 to avoid interference with any WiFi LANs that you may have.

Since I was trying to shoot about 6' from my WiFi LAN, setting to frequency 5 completely took care of my problem. :mrgreen:

Hmmm. does it work the other way too? I had a setup with 2 Einsteins and a CC and the camera transmitter, all worked perfectly for the shoot all day. But my assistant witha PC could see the wifi network in the room (5 bars) but could not connect to the router at all. Moving out to the hall solved her problem.

Could the CC and receivers in the room mess up computers?

Fred

If you think that the CC and/or CST transmitters are colliding with your wifi freqs., then you should be able to change either the PCB freq. or the router's freq. to fix the interference. My router can be change with 11 different freqs. ranging from 2.412Ghz to 2.462Ghz. Of course you will have to change the channel on your PC or laptop as well. It would be nice if we knew what freq. that the SyberSync tranmitters use on each of it's 10 channels so we can set them to not interfer with wifi routers.

RMS

The Cyber Commander lists the frequency with each itemized selection when you set it. Essentially, the frequencies start at 2.427 and go up by .002 GHz for each step. Here's what mine shows:

01: 2.427 GHz
02: 2.429 GHz
03: 2.431 GHz
04: 2.433 GHz
05: 2.435 GHz
06: 2.437 GHz
07: 2.439 GHz
08: 2.441 GHz
09: 2.443 GHz
10: 2.445 GHz
11: 2.447 GHz
12: 2.449 GHz
13: 2.451 GHz
14: 2.453 GHz
15: 2.455 GHz
16: 2.457 GHz

I assume these are accurate for CCs, CSTs, and CSR+ units (they wouldn't work very well if they weren't using the same frequencies, would they?). I have no idea about other units.

Hope this helps!

The range of WiFi channels extends beyond the range of CS channels. CS extends from WiFi's channels 4-10.


This would be on a case by case basis. As the frequency set on a a router can vary, the resulting frequency you should use to aviod interference will also vary. So if you get issues on freq 1, we often suggest dialing way over to 5 or 10 as an example. Setting to 5 or 10 to universally avoid WiFi is not accurate, and we appologize if that was the impression we gave.

Also, when having such issues, try dialing off and back onto the intended channel and/or freq. Occasionally, a dial may be bumped off channel just a bit but not appear that way. (I realize the OP did try that to no avail, but others may have different outcomes).