Volt using 26V Battery?

[Marc Dunham]

In a rush I purchased some 26V batteries by mistake, not thinking.

I’m on set and couldn’t figure out why I was getting power to my M2 top stage but it wasn’t passing that power to the Volt on the gimbal, it also wouldn’t pass power to the D-Tap ports. I’ve tried switching to 24v on the bottom but no dice. 

I can’t return these batteries. Is there any way to get this to work with the volt? Is there adapter plates I don’t know of? I assume I’m shit out of luck but figured I’d ask. 

[Tom Wills]

It sounds like the batteries were passing 24v through the normal 12v pins on your battery plates. The M2 as a rig is not designed for 24v batteries, and in fact if you switched the rig into “24v” mode would get 48v out of the 24v pins on the sled. Assuming that your batteries are 24v only and not “dual voltage”, when you put your 24v battery on, it is going to output 24v on all the 12v output pins on the sled. This could do damage to any electronics not designed as multi-voltage capable. This is a big problem, and could easily damage a camera or accessory - in fact I’m not sure if you’ve damaged your Volt since you put 26v into the input pins where it was expecting 12-16v. Again, unless your batteries are dual-voltage and smartly sense what type of plate they are on (like the Helix dual-voltage type) I absolutely would not use them on your rig!

Edited October 7, 2024 by Tom Wills