Teradek Bolt

[Joshua Gitersonke]

I have used both of the other systems and what I meant by "the great equalizer" is that the performance of the Bolt is basically good enough for the majority of jobs. I won't rent something more expensive if in reality the Bolt is going to do a great job. Yes, the Boxx system is possibly a gold standard and for high end productions a good possibility for renting. But for many operators this type of system is just for renting. The Bolt works well regardless of the price. But the fact that it's going to work well and you can easily own it is also nice.

If you are someone buying a Paralinx and using it on every job via an sdi convertor or have been using a Canatrans for that matter.., then you are gonna be really happy to have a Bolt.

[Jackson Yeung]

New update:

 

Apparently, the actual voltage tolerance of the BOLT Tx is 16.8V - 5V. It will ignore all other voltages. I'm not sure how it handles voltage higher than 16.8...

 

 

 

[Mike Gailing]

New update:

 

Apparently, the actual voltage tolerance of the BOLT Tx is 16.8V - 5V. It will ignore all other voltages. I'm not sure how it handles voltage higher than 16.8...

 

To clarify, anything above 17V or below 5V will ignore the DC input on Bolt and will make it run off the internal battery.

[Charles Papert]

Mike, Chris at your company confirmed to me today that the max voltage that will cause the unit to shunt over to the battery is 16v, not 17v. Which is it?

 

Either way, this happened to us during a shoot last week. The internal battery had been run down, and reception began to diminish. We didn't have time to meter the power coming from the sled (Will Demeritt's) to confirm that this was what was happening, but the unit was unable to maintain transmission across 15-20 feet line of sight in this circumstance.

[RonBaldwin]

Internal battery!? Oy vey -- why!?

 

Will it still work with proper input voltage via a cable even though the internal batt has been depleted? If not then that is a problem that needs to be solved.

[Mike Gailing]

Mike, Chris at your company confirmed to me today that the max voltage that will cause the unit to shunt over to the battery is 16v, not 17v. Which is it?

 

Either way, this happened to us during a shoot last week. The internal battery had been run down, and reception began to diminish. We didn't have time to meter the power coming from the sled (Will Demeritt's) to confirm that this was what was happening, but the unit was unable to maintain transmission across 15-20 feet line of sight in this circumstance.

 

I believe the actual number is 16.8V. My information is likely a little less current than Chris' since I've been out of town for a bit so I would stick with what he says. When the battery runs down to near complete depletion, the transmission will begin to suffer.

 

Ron, Bolt will work just fine with proper voltage from a cable even if the battery is depleted. If you have any technical questions, Chris in Support (support@teradek.com) is your best bet for a comprehensive answer.

[Charles Papert]

So let's talk a little more about this internal battery and what it means in real life situations. A few above have noted that it keeps the unit hot while you are changing your sled battery, which they consider a nice feature. What about when you power your rig off when you are not using it? The Bolt switches over to the internal battery, which eventually runs down. I myself used to save power on my rig off all the time. So this means multiple times a day, you will run the onboard battery down to nothing, and every time you turn the rig back on, it will recharge. Big deal? Maybe, maybe not.

 

Consider the situation that we experienced on our show, where the battery was depleted and the rig had hot batt's. The transmitter becomes unreliable. A quick fix is to change out the sled battery for one that has a lesser charge state, but that's weird. You could add an inline voltage regulator to keep the incoming voltage under the stated range of the Bolt (which is still under debate), but that's klugy. Solves that problem, though.

 

However, you still have a unit that is constantly switching over to internal battery when you turn off the rig. How many cycles does the internal battery support? For day in, day out use like on a series, you might run through a battery within a season. Perhaps Mike or someone else can tell us about battery replacement procedures--does it have to be returned to the manufacturer or can it be done by the end user?

 

One way to avoid this is to turn the Bolt off by its power switch when not in use. Fine in theory, but the longtime tradition of powering off the sled is that all accessories are controlled by the master power switch or breaker. Who really wants to have to remember to power down a separate accessory and then have to remember to power it back up again? How often will you forget to power it back up and hear "no picture at village!" The mentality of multiple batteries and power switches is something that came in with the DSLR era: plenty of people had setups with cameras powered off internal battery,viewfinders powered off an additional battery, external monitors powered off yet another battery and so on. It was completely confounding to me to have to manage all those power source and one of the first things I did on my personal setup was connect everything via a single Anton Bauer battery, which took a bit of effort (thanks again to Matt Petrosky who made all of my custom cables with inline regulators). Maybe I'm just a freak about this but it makes little sense to me to have a component on a Steadicam that is merrily burning away when all of the breakers are popped and needs to be attended to separately.

 

One solution to this would be that the unit have a timed auto shutoff when external power is cut, say, five minutes. This would give enough time to change batteries and still have the unit remain up, which has been noted as a plus, but would keep it from running itself down when the rig rests. To properly work with an auto-power situation, the power switch on the Bolt should nominally be a momentary button rather than the mechanical switch currently in use because it is confusing to have a unit appear off when the switch says it is on. This of course would not be applicable to the current model but since Teradek is reading this, it's a suggestion for future models.

 

My interest in the Teradek was not just for use on Steadicam, but as a cable replacement for all modes (Steadicam, handheld, studio). Much in the way that we used to have Moduluses on film cameras full-time and had complete mobility. For me spending my life at the monitors, it's frustrating that each time the dolly moves from A to B while a shot is being lined up, the cable gets unplugged. With many shows unable to afford a utility, cable duties take a back seat to other more pressing issues and it would be great to have a reliable clean* image via transmitter. However, all of the same issues with powering apply in these modes. It's an extra step to power cycle the transmitter via that tiny switch when a camera is powered down (one camera only, lunch, company move, end of day etc) and I can't expect the AC's to have to do that, nor do I want to have to wait around to see if they've remembered to turn it back on when they power up (they won't).

 

If anyone has a revelation about all of this, I'd be happy to hear it. In the meantime, I'm returning the Bolt.

 

* "clean" is a relative term. I have yet to work with a transmitter (including the Boxx) that doesn't introduce a certain amount of noise into the image. It's an acceptable tradeoff but don't be thinking that the images from any of these transmitters is consistently the same as hard-wired. You see the difference on the waveform. Occasionally I've had to assuage a sharp-eyed director who is thinking we boosted the ISO or something.

[Lawrence Karman]

All good observations Charles. I considered that onboard battery a plus during battery changes and have not had enough usage time with it to deal with turning it on and off during long power down times. For me, I would power it through the (mostly) Alexa camera body, which is regulated 12v, so over voltage not an issue. And these days we turn the camera on during prep and don't power down till the wrap party so running down the internal battery probably won't happen much, but it does have lots of bright blue LED's to indicate that it's been left on and maybe it's time to shut it down. I wholly agree that in the least there should be a 2 position switch with the option of internal or external power. Or a 3 position switch with EXT,INT and OFF. Seems like a simple retrofit that Terdek could do.

Also once the battery dies and it's being powered externally does the transmission suffer? An most importantly, after using it for a while, what is your impression of the transmission range and reliability?

[Charles Papert]

I wish that I had had time to be scientific about things on the recent shoot. Many other things clamoring for my attention. Overall it seemed to do pretty well, for the time that we were able to use it. Transmitters are a tough rap. You don't notice them until they have an issue (and then it's really frustrating). As noted by Ron above, the Boxx has that early warning indicator where the picture starts to get noisy which tips you off to pending issues (so you check batteries or move the antenna closer etc). It's tough to go back to a TX system that simply shuts off the picture when it isn't happy.

 

The Bolt worked OK. The power thing makes me poopy. It's relatively inexpensive and that's good. But I'm keeping the Boxx for now and waiting to see what the next thing down the pike will be.

[Brian Freesh]

One solution to this would be that the unit have a timed auto shutoff when external power is cut, say, five minutes. This would give enough time to change batteries and still have the unit remain up, which has been noted as a plus, but would keep it from running itself down when the rig rests. To properly work with an auto-power situation, the power switch on the Bolt should nominally be a momentary button rather than the mechanical switch currently in use because it is confusing to have a unit appear off when the switch says it is on. This of course would not be applicable to the current model but since Teradek is reading this, it's a suggestion for future models.

 

The only flaw with this solution is that a "too-hot" battery will still not power the Bolt, so it will shut off after 5 minutes and won't power back on until the external battery drains enough or is replaced.

 

I humbly suggest the Bolt (or at least a future model) should accept up to >30volts (35 minimum to be super safe) as many other devices do these days. Makes everything much simpler.

 

At the very least it should accept a few more volts so the external power option isn't ruined by a fresh 12v battery.

[William Demeritt]

Also worth mentioning(?): the heat dissipation is a problem. After transmitting for a while, the Bolt's chassis become uncomfortably hot. During one handheld shot, I discovered the unit was too hot (by it pressed against my face and being very uncomfortable) and distracted me from operating. Heat sinks would be a good idea.

[Charles Papert]

Heat sinks are good but it wouldn't help being pressed against it. The Modulus got amazingly hot, even with the heat sinks on the 3000.

 

Brian, good point. I didn't clarify but of course the upper voltage range should be improved (that's the "easy" fix compared to the battery conundrum). I asked Chris about that and he suggested this would be looked at for a future model, but not to expect any updates/upgrades to the current model.

[Mark Schlicher]

So, let me make sure I understand....a "too-hot" external battery causes the Bolt to auto-switch to the internal battery, which then runs down to the point of transmitter unreliability and severely compromised transmission distance, before switching automatically back to an external battery? Wow. That's a deal-breaker in a production environment for sure. Is it possible to disassemble the unit and bypass and remove the internal batttery?

 

Bolt solves the biggest shortcoming of Paralinx (HDMI only, requiring external converters), but (if I understand this correctly) introduces a huge shortcoming of its own. That's a real shame.

[Charles Papert]

Well, I think so. Another scenario where this could happen is if the cable were accidentally unplugged or developed a short. You'd never know it until the battery died on the Bolt, and even if you immediately remedied the cable issue with a backup etc., you'd still be SOL. In our situation, everything stopped dead while we pulled the Bolt, brought the Boxx in from the truck, mounted it, rebalanced etc. Equipment failure is one thing, and it can happen to just about any gear, within reason. Design flaw is another.

 

Just to be clear to any and all from Teradek: the point here is not to malign your product with snap judgements as is typical of too many message boards. This Forum is (theoretically) made up of industry professionals who have high standards for their gear because those standards are expected in turn by the people who hire them. Few items in a Steadicam package are more critical than a transmitter, because that is the direct link to the most important people on set. Every new product is circled around and evaluated in this fashion.

 

There will be many users of the Bolt out there who are just happy to be able to push an image wirelessly (some for the first time in their likely brief careers) and will be perfectly satisfied with the compromises presented. Understand that if you came out with a "pro" product that costs 50% more and delivered 50% better performance without the voltage and battery issues etc., most people here would still buy it (unlike the typical message board moaning about everything costing too much). Bottom line is: tough crowd here, but one that you should listen to if you want your products to gain traction in the working industry.

 

So Mike or others from Teradek, if any of this is incorrect or can be further clarified, please do so. FYI the first unit that I received did not accept incoming voltage. Chris said something about suspected reverse polarity being fed into it. I talked through the workflow with Will and we determined that it was all but impossible for that to occur with the way we were powering it, unless the supplied cable itself was miswired.

[Alec Jarnagin SOC]

Charles,

 

As always, thanks for taking the time to record your thoughts on this Forum. I hope the people at Teradek listen to you as I think you've just sighted a deal breaker for me. If a product can not handle an industry standard AB battery hot off the charger, it is not a professional piece of gear in my mind. For those reading from Teradek, I'm not bashing your product either, but as Charles pointed out, we are a picky bunch. I've been on numerous back-to-back long-term jobs which all rent Boxx transmitters from the camera house so I'm not in a huge rush, but I would love to have a transmitter I call my own.

 

Thanks,