Does any one know if there is a likely easy cause to fix it or if the camera which is EOL and out of affordable product product is now a historic artifact. I guess it is back to SI2K for me with the speed booster and 35mm lenses. Also post on BM's own forum. Any advice appreciated. Cheers.

For the sake of the curious, there is a rather poor quality image of the guts of the "big" URSA camera. I have managed to extract the beating heart of the beast without harming anything. So far no signs of burnings of parts or obvious trauma. So it looks like I am going to hit a wall.

It appears that this motherboard carries a memory battery. I just wonder if the battery goes dead flat over an extended period like the three plus months this thing slept, whether the embedded operating system can become corrupted by the next start-up and the appliance knows no longer its raison d'être, whether it is a hospital IV drip controller, an electric toaster or an URSA camera's guts.

It was rare but possible for the SI2K camera to lose its mind. It was running on a stripped down embedded Windows XPe and the hardware was up to critical medical equipment standards. If the memory battery went flat, it would do weird stuff to the recorded file order. For it, there was a recovery tool on a USB stick which reconstructed the operating system from scratch.

If that memory battery on the URSA motherboard is done for, then maybe replacing it, then attempting to put the latest firmware in again might help it mend its ways. Then again if there was doubt it was a brick, there may remain no doubt afterwards.

I would dearly like to get my greasy fingers on some service notes, which can warn me off such folly or tell me how to go about it.

Hi Bob,
Start off with a disclaimer: I'm not a camera repair person and just like to take things apart so consider the source. That out of the way ...

Looked at the picture but couldn't see the battery, not that it matters, but the first thing would be to check the voltage on it. Even thought the voltage might be not that bad, if it can't generate the current it could still be not good enough.

My first guess would be the button battery.

Was there a cam battery attached during this time? If so, how was the charge on it after the three months? If it was low then I'd really suspect the button battery.

Can the button battery be replaced and things just partially put back together to see if it would work?

Hello again John.

The battery was not connected to the camera for all of that time it was stored. I have a deep distrust of lithium batteries and park them where they can immolate themselves to their heart's content but cannot burn the place down on my head.

Some cameras have a minuscule amount of current drain on the main camera battery for some reason. If the URSA does that then, just maybe, part of the battery drain may be to support whatever the button battery would power. If the minuscule current travels through a capacitor to some sort of a circuit that is waiting for action the capacitor leakage through the dielectric can be a problem over time. Not saying that is what it is but just thinking out of the box. In which case the button battery could eventually go dead.

I used to take the batteries out of my cameras when not used, too, but now I leave them in the cams just in case there is a sacrificial drain. With everything else (multi tester, moisture meter, scales, flashlights, etc.) when they aren't used for a while, like when we go on a long vacation, I take the batteries out (typically AA, AAA, and 9v). Even though the hybrid Prius has a lot of battery power it does't hold up that well when it isn't run.

Both my Mac Pros have a button battery on the mother board and thanks to your post I went and turned on the old 3,1 which I haven't used in months just to see if it works and to make sure the battery gets charged. Have a new button battery to put in it but haven't got 'round to do it.

I'm still curious about the voltage on the button battery though.

John.


I have an enquiry out with Blackmagic's web support messenger about a possible memory battery and whether replacement then re-update with latest firmware via USB in the camera base will restore function.

I am not entirely hopeful but who knows?

Bob - Hopefully, being a smaller company unlike the big ones, they will provide some detailed support instead o "Sorry, it's out of warranty" or "send ti to [name of repair shop]".

Keeping track of where all the screws went and the parts, or how they came apart, is a tough one. Taking things apart usually isn't that bad although some products, I swear, are designed to prevent one doing that. Remembering where everything came from is a challenge. A photo or video record for the difficult things along with paper documentation helps.

Good luck with them and let us know what happens.

John.


The screws are pretty straightforward and are equal lengths of each type. There are lots of them.

I sent a message request on the BM world website. They handballed it back to the Australian vendor/repairer New Magic whom I have already been in contact with. There will be no technical information forthcoming from BM. Their tech must be their worst enemy.They are even holding the EOL/obsolete stuff close it seems.

In the interests of fair play, it should be acknowledged that getting tech info out of other manufacturers is also like trying to draw an elephant's tooth. It is a pretty competitive arena out there and copycat products can appear almost overnight to the detriment of the original researcher and developer.

Purely for the sake of the curious, here is a pic of what appears to be a memory battery secured by a spring clip. The ability to remove the battery has been defeated by the clip being pinwelded to the battery body or it may be a variety of the battery with a tag attached top and bottom to enable solder points. It is delivering 0.7V.

I sent a message request on the BM world website. They handballed it back to the Australian vendor/repairer New Magic whom I have already been in contact with. There will be no technical information forthcoming from BM. Their tech must be their worst enemy.They are even holding the EOL/obsolete stuff close it seems.
Bummer.

In the interests of fair play, it should be acknowledged that getting tech info out of other manufacturers is also like trying to draw an elephant's tooth. It is a pretty competitive arena out there and copycat products can appear almost overnight to the detriment of the original researcher and developer.
When I was at the Seattle Boat Show, going up and down the aisles of exhibits, there was a water maker that really looked interesting and I asked if I could take a picture. The exhibitor said he didn't want a picture taken because there are Asians that come over to find what's new then go back and copy the ideas so I can really understand their protectionism.

Purely for the sake of the curious, here is a pic of what appears to be a memory battery secured by a spring clip. The ability to remove the battery has been defeated by the clip being pinwelded to the battery body or it may be a variety of the battery with a tag attached top and bottom to enable solder points. It is delivering 0.7V.
With the battery being covered and either glued or soldered, there is no way to see what kind of battery it is, so….

According to Maxell list of their button batteries, in their cross-reference guide, the mercury batteries all have a voltage range of 1.50 to 1.55 V and elsewhere I read the mercury batteries are not rechargeable. Their other "General Memory Backup" batteries are Lithium-Manganese and have a nominal 3.0V. The mercury and lithium are the only two types in their cross-reference list. There are other manufacturers but in my very limited searching this was the only table that popped up.

The LiMn battery is rechargeable. There are various designations of the LiMn batteries, like LiMn O2 and so forth so don't know if they're all the same. Also some voltages listed include 3.7V.

If the battery is rechargeable then finding a way to connect the "mother board" (if that's what the battery is on) to a charger and seeing if the voltage will increase would be interesting. If it does increase then that might be the solution. The charger port is probably on the camera body so making a temporary connection might mean some temporary reassembly. As long as the battery has some voltage there is hope for recharging it - assuming that is possible.

If the voltage can be increased via charging then there is hope because it just may be below a minimum threshold. If there is more to it, like the firmware due to loosing memory then it'll be a problem.

I have carefully prised the spotwelded tag off the battery body. It turns out to be an ELNA 3.3v 22f supercapacitor. It would have been very helpful to have shop information but BM keeps its intellectual property very close.Getting it desoldered is going to be a bit of a mission. It now has to come out because the spotwelds have bulged the metal case.

Bob,

There's an absolutely top bloke in Perth who is a whiz at these electronic soldering fixes of broken components. He's been active on the Beyonwiz forums for a long time and is very highly regarded (http://www.beyonwiz.com.au/forum/viewtopic.php?t=6005&start=40).

Contact Mark Vasile direct on 0458 588 555.

The guy knows his stuff and may even be able to locate the real cause of the issue for you. (I will be sending him some of my broken gear very soon, all the way from Brisbane.)

Andrew

Andrew.


Thank you very much for that information.

Blackmagic keep their product information obsessively close. Without a circuit diagram, he could be confronted with a heavy mission. Being close-handy, it will be worth showing it to him versus paying extortionate freight to the approved outfit New Magic in Victoria only to be advised it is fit only to be pitched in the recycle bin.

I concur with you re New Magic in Victoria knowing any better or having BM somehow decide to share info with them.

I can't imagine someone there at a wholesaler/box pusher having the soldering iron skills and lab conditions to replace a circuit board item. They'd only then say "oooh, that be icky ugly" and then subcontract it on to someone outside your control. Best to go straight to Mark.

Andrew

Hi Bob,

How did it go with Mark Vasile and fixing your camera? Have you made contact yet?

Andrew

Hello again Andrew.


Thank you for checking in. I have been tied up in a slew of other fixits including having no wheels presently so have neglected pursuing the camera. The collective diagnosis thus far seems to fall on the sensor or its sub-boards having failed.

The pixellation artifact is consistent with another BM camera type having failed with a similar look and it was the sensor and its PCB which gave up in that instance.

The takeaway lesson is that the BM cameras are very affordable compared to other brands, come up to professional standards in imaging and sound recording but are essentially a consumer-level throwaway product, mostly incapable of affordable repair.

BM seem to be very good in regards no argument new buy warranty replacement but after the warranty expires, then the countdown begins and one needs to modify one's expectations.

Being of a secondhand rose mentality, for me BM cameras are no longer worth the investment if one intends to keep them and use them for an extended period of time compared to some of the more established brands like Sony which seem to soldier on for years beyond obsolescence.

I have two SI2K bodies. One I bought in as a parts donor against the good cam expiring but both still work. The donor body had a dead sound board but spontaneously healed itself. I got a cheap Mini head for it and began using both for events with B4 lenses.

It later copped a power surge from a mix desk which unadvised to me had been connected to a generator, not the main power. That killed off the sound again, this time for keeps and the SD301 mixer also copped a sick input channel. I was using it to relay controlled audio from that camera to the good camera body and that is probably what saved the good camera.

So for the time being, I am back on the SI2K system.

A postscript to the broken camera saga.


I managed to find on eBay, another broken Ursa, an EF-Mount. This camera's etiology was incremental demise via power management. There was a strong chance the camera head was good and it turned out to be so.

The filter placement and collimation of the EF-Mount turret to the sensor was different so I ended up moving the entire sensor and PCBs across to the PL-Mount turret. I bench tested everything and it seemed fine.

In removing the supercapacitor from the motherboard, a solder pad came off the PCB. The layers on these boards are exceptionally thin. However it seems to function quite happily without it.

It seems maybe that the supercapacitor serves as a memory battery. I did not observe previously but it seems that when the camera is powered down, any time-date settings revert to the camera's birthday and playback clip order shifts in accordance with just when individual clips were started during power-on periods.

The SI2K also does this when the memory batteries go flat. Whether there is a conflict between files if one initiates during the same time period written to another file I have yet to discover. I may have to reset times and dates during each power cycle before rolling.

Interesting to hear!

So, an otherwise usable camera once again?

Andrew

It is usable again for now. Even its own power management glitch seems to have gone away.

It went through a period where it would not power-on from a battery unless it was "jump-started" from the 4pin XLR power input first, then for the remainder of the day it would run fine off the battery.

I wonder if the sensor/sensor PCBs in the failed turret may have been drawing too much power on its way to failure.

Whichever, I am going to accept what comes gratefully, hopefully for some time yet.

The patched up "big" URSA still lives.

You get to see and do some fun things with a camera sometimes. This was filming a smoke generator test for a friend and co-writer of a film script..

He has all the necessary permissions and skillset for this display.

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