Hi All,

Please find attached our announcement on the release of what we have dubbed the HDR, the Hard Disk Recorder card.

I had planned to make the announcement last Monday of the un-powered version. But we have been researching and testing and have come up with a solution which can draw the power necessary for the HDD or SSD directly from the camera. And because we were so close to perfecting the solution we decided to hold back on announcing anything until we knew if we could release in this round or not.

We're in production right now, and will be accepting orders from 29 June 2009, with a shipping date of 6 July 2009.

As you can imagine we're really excited about this product release, and have put a tremendous amount of time into getting it right.

And we have also been working on two other products which we think will revolutionise data flows for EX users.

Thanks again for all the encouragement and support.

BTW the artwork has changed for the product in the PDF, I just used some MxR stickers as a place holder.

Brilliant, Ross -- well worth waiting for.

Can you give us any info on suitable SSDs etc? What did you test with?

Also, how does the cable affect the slot cover when working in unpleasant environments?

The non-techies among us (me) might like an option to buy a whole set-up in one go. Do you have any plans to supply “kits” including power, drive etc?

Sorry for so many questions!

Here is the link to the EX-V adapter EX-V (http://www.dolgin.net/EX-Vadapter.htm)
Ross mentioned in the press release. The adapter uses BP-U60/U30 batteries to put out regulated 5V for powering up to two HDs or SSDs.

Good-on-ya, Ross.

I read the news release 3 times and I still don't "get" the power options. A few photos showing it connected to the various power sources would be so nice for those of us who are "visual" (as in most of us).

Here is the link to the EX-V adapter EX-V (http://www.dolgin.net/EX-Vadapter.htm)
Ross mentioned in the press release. The adapter uses BP-U60/U30 batteries to put out regulated 5V for powering up to two HDs or SSDs.

Alex - the link below the EX-V-5V photo is to the EX-V adapter ($34.95 or $39 depending on where you are on the website) - is that the same as the EX-V-5V adapter?

EDIT: Oops - I went digging further and saw that the 5V is an option for an add'l $59- $65. Never mind.

Yes Ronn, the base EX-V adapter is a plate with a cable attached, no electronics. The 5V version of it has a high efficiency 5V (up to 3A) voltage regulator inside.
HTH

Happy days

would love to see image of the enclosure and the system mounted on an Ex1 with battery power etc.

Peter

A major breakthrough, Ross. Just to clarify: even though you mention ac powering, this will power the drive and the camera off the battery alone?

And what kind or make of hard drives are you talking about using?

As the mini usb plug would stick out of the card adapter, and therefore out of the side of the camera, I wonder if it latches into the card? - I'm concerned about accidentally losing the data feed as neither the card nor cable are very securely installed whilst the door on the camera is open.

I think the permanantly cabled version looks most secure.


Paul

I'm hoping that Ross will sell just the ..."the un-powered HDR product, one with a removable Mini-USB cable, (HDR-U)" adapter card so I can use my own arrangement for power & SSD.

Ross, do you have a price for your HDR-U adapter card only, the one with the usb socket (plug in my own usb cable, power, etc.)?

This will be a bit easier than modifying a generic adapter card.

Evan

Thank you Ross!

I'm looking forward to it.

Brilliant, Ross -- well worth waiting for.

Can you give us any info on suitable SSDs etc? What did you test with?

Also, how does the cable affect the slot cover when working in unpleasant environments?

The non-techies among us (me) might like an option to buy a whole set-up in one go. Do you have any plans to supply “kits” including power, drive etc?

Sorry for so many questions!

Hi Paul,

We have been testing a number of SSD's and HDD's, and we get closer to full release I'll post a list of the ones we think offer the best performance. I can tell you price and performance are not linked in what we have worked with so far.

We are working next week, on a cover which surrounds the Mini-USB plug, which will protect the camera, but will only be designed for Slot B in the EX1. In the EX3 no problem.

We thought about the idea of having components that users could select which parts they wanted to buy, but everytime we bought a new enclosure or a new cable, we'd end up with performance problems, so decided, if we were going to end up supporting the whole product, we may as well design and supply the whole product.

So what we have gone for is high quality shielding on the PCB in the HDR, high quality cabling, and high quality PCB in the enclosure.

These aren't corner computer store components, they are all designed with one thing in mind, getting data reliably from the EX1 to the hard drive.

The only question in our minds was the HDD itself. We thought that our customers woudl prefer to source that locally, so if there are any warranty issue they can sort them out with their supplier.

We also know some users won't want to even add the hard drive, that's ok we'll supply one, and fit it for a small fee.

Thanks Ross,
would love to have one,
too bad no chance for dual recording, slot A - MxR . slot B - HDR,
would be awesome,
thanks again.

Good-on-ya, Ross.

I read the news release 3 times and I still don't "get" the power options. A few photos showing it connected to the various power sources would be so nice for those of us who are "visual" (as in most of us).

Hi Ronn,

We were trying to give users as many options as possible,

1) Power from an external source only, eg our power pack or Alex Dolgin's.

2) Power from camera.

3) Power from external source and camera.


But we only managed to confuse everybody. Sorry about that.

So what we thought we'd do is fall back to the externally powered version for now. Spend some more time getting feedback from our customers on how they want a powered version to work, and then release that at a later date.

One suggestion is to have a switch where the user could turn off power from the HDR if they wanted to, and run on external power, run on both, or power solely from the camera.

Another is to have an internally mounted "top up" battery, which supplies the difference in power between the HDD requirements and the camera's output.

That's just a couple of thoughts that have been on the white-board for a while...

What do you think?

Looks like Sony caught wind of the efforts posted here... and are now trying to catch any uninformed folk with a crummy $100 discount.

But maybe someone doens't want to go the 'home-grown' route... so if you are interested in the Sony offering, here is the LINK (https://www.rebate-zone.com/default.asp?PN=SY00122k7&DirectID=29325)

eFilms has great product idea here - is Sony trying to buy you guys out yet??

I don't understand why anyone would want use "spinning disks" for this application. One thing that is sure - sooner or later every conventional hard drive will fail. The camera limits the drive capacity so those SSDs are within a reasonable price range.

I wonder if the camera's chip record time limit is a hardware or software limit?

I also think in a year or two we'll see 64 or 128 GB SDHC chips...

Ross, in my opinion, the option to power the drive though the adapter running off internal camera power is what I would want.

Less to think about on a gig and if you are on battery the one connection to the drive makes it more mobile.

Am I on the right page here?

Is it possible to run power to a SSD drive over the same cable that sends the data?

Ross I have a query on your very interesting product. The SxS cards have a 600 shot limit, i.e. if on a single card (for example a 32 GB card) one shoots 600 shots then the card would indicate that it is full even though these 600 shots might not be long enough to exceed the 116 minutes that are (theoretically)provided by a 32 GB card. Will this SSD drive be limited in the same way?

If so then such a product would only be ideal in lengthy continuous shooting, such as for example concerts. In my situation where I typically shoot about 450 shots in a single wedding on one 32GB card, I cannot see myself ever buying a larger card than a 32GB as I will run out of shots and not memory space.