bacilonur
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Disclaimer: I think this is a spectacular device and I aplaud Paul for having the vision to be the first to bring it to the market. It's got loads of potential uses and I'm 100% sure that Paul will keep his engineers working on the firmware to find these glitches.
My notes here are for anyone who may be considering bringing it to a wedding or a critical shoot or using it in a way that will not allow you to perform a hard reset on the CSRB+ easily (catwalks in a stadium) . As with anything, Murphy's law will always find a way to bite you at the worst possible time. I'm fairly sure Paul will say he tested all these conditions, but I'm a software engineer and I know how incredibly difficult it can be to test for every condition and track a series of events that cause an error. I honestly didn't expect this many problems, or else I'd have taped my testing to be able to send in. I read the entire manual first and the only CC sections I was going through during my testing were the ones you would on a shoot: FLASH, MODEL, GROUPS, LIGHT SETTINGS, and FLASHMETER.
All tests were conducted with a brand new CC, CSRB+, and a two year-old AB800. Nothing was changed with the strobe/CSRB+ setup except for when a hard reset was performed, at which time I disconnected the RJ-11, turned off the AB800, and removed the batteries from the CSRB and CC. On the AB800, the MODEL LAMP "ON" button was pressed in, both others were depressed.
#1: While this isn't technically a bug, it's something that I assumed would be included in the programming from day 1 and that I'm very disappointed about: Metering each light individually in sequence with the click of a button. I tried using groups and All, but nothing seemed to work. Currently the only way to see each individual light's meter reading is to scroll through each channel individually and click Meter. Clicking Meter when All is selected only gives you the overall reading, it doesn't update each channel's individual meter reading (the little yellow bar). I'm not sure how difficult this is to program but it's one of the things I was looking forward to the most.
#2: Twice the CC stopped responding to my power adjustments on the AB800 completely. Firing it did not work and changing the power did not work. One time it had set the Power setting to Standby (which I am 100% sure I did not do on my own), and the next time it was also on standby but setting it to On did not fix it. A hard reset of the CC did not fix it, either, only removing the CSRB+'s batteries remedied the problem.
#3: Once, after changing some of the Group settings, I went back to the Channel selector and the AB800 decided to fire every time I clicked Meter regardless of which channel was selected. 1-16 and All fired it every time. The little yellow bar showed up in the exact same spot in every channel. I hadn't touched the CSRB+'s channel setting. Changing the CSRB+ channel from 3 to 4 did not fix the problem. I reset the CSRB+, CC, and strobe, and that fixed it.
#4: Once, after performing a hard reset and re-initializing a single channel with the strobe model, switching between individual channels and attempting to fire them did not work. It took selecting All, firing the meter button (successfully), and then switching to channel 3 for it to trigger. Nothing else was changed during the meantime, and the strobe was set to On, not Standby.
#5: The Model Mode selector seems to have a mind of its own. It usually seems to work fine, but twice after I enabled and disabled the light, I would attempt to change the Model setting with the joystick and it would switch momentarily to the light but then it would switch back real quick. I assume it attempts to change and sends out the signal, but then the CSRB+ is returning an error that resets it. If you hold down the joystick to the top or bottom (without releasing it), it would sometimes work, but the next time you did it, it would switch back to Off.
#6: Model Mode "Off" sometimes doesn't really turn it off. It just sets my modeling bulb to a very, very low setting. Other times, after I let the CC fall asleep, I would go back and it would shut off the bulb completely.
#7: After setting Light Settings -> Model Mode to Track, nothing happened. After a hard reset, it worked.
I've numbered them from most important to least important, in my opinion. This was throughout a 90-minute test period involving just a single AB800, CC, and CSRB+ while I was on a boring conference call. I'm going to use it on a shoot this afternoon (along with my new 3lb/5aH battery pack :->, but I'll keep a CST on camera in case things get wonky.
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I pulled out the trusted L358 to get my setting. The CC had a fresh set of batteries and still had to fiddle with it to meter, even here at home.