TILTA battery plate stray voltage warning

Hi
Just thought I'd warn people about  Tilta battery plates ( i bought one on ebay , so have no idea if its genuine )
Since frying a few monitors and a couple of camera's it started to dawn on me that the problem may be something to do with the battery plate .
After twiddling around a bit with my multi-meter i found that when I was using the Tilta battery plate with its power switch in the OFF position , there was a voltage of around 12 to 13 v across the SDI connection between the camera and the monitor .
This is when i have the monitor powered by the D-tap and camera powered by the 12v outlet.
On turning the battery plate switch to the ON position the voltage leak disappeared .

I first suspected something was amiss on observing the led on the plate light up , when the power switch was off and i connected the bnc between camera and monitor .

I tested powering the camera and battery with another vlock plate ( by different manufacturer) and this stray voltage anomaly didnt happen -

Today I took the blown monitor in for repair and a technician ran several tests on the battery plate
to confirm that there was indeed some kind of short circuit fault in the circuit board and power switch . And this was likely at the heart of the cause of fried monitors and cameras.

So there appears to be a fault with the Tilta battery plate I bought on ebay .
The voltage leak is a fault either by design or in manufacture , something you wouldnt expect or naturally test for .

My Black Magic MFT camera is back at Black Magic uk being tested and repaired .
I have to say everyone has been very helpful and very communicative in this investigation.

I think it may be possible to re-wire the battery plate  and avoid the switch  and circuit board which i think is just a voltage regulator i dont need (as i wont use the other outlets ) . As my other plate is very simple and doesnt have this in and works fine.
I do like the design of the Tilta plate and ergonomically it works beautifully on my rig . So if i can just solve the wiring problem all will be great . And i can hopefully feel more reassured using it on shoots without embarrassing moments of having to explain duff monitoring situations whilst having cold sweats .

cheers
Marcus

Scary. I use the same Tilta plate, powering both the camera and an Alphatron. The battery plates operates correctly, but I have one doubt: wich is the purpose of the on/off switch? In my unit, the camera and viewfinder get power even if the switch is on the off position (with the blue led on) . If I turn it on, the blue led gets brighter, but it makes no difference to the camera.
I bought it at cinegearpro a few months ago.

Be careful it may not be a genuine Titla. Titla themselves spoke about this a few months back on another forum.

How do you find out if it's a fake?

I second Christian : how do we find out that it is a counterfeit Tilta battery plate ?
And if it is genuine plate it would be nice to share with us the way to rewire it.

Yikes!

I just had my Cineroid fail on me. I also have the same Tilta plate and also noticed that it was weird that the LED did not turn off when the switch was in the off position.

I ordered mine direct from Tilta so its genuine and I can say our battery plate does the exact same thing. Switch on the top does absolutely nothing except that blue light. Definitely doesn't work as an on off switch.

Fuckin hell, I just bought one on Ebay. Should I be worried?

I heard a lot of guys have trouble with that plate.
Normally the switch should activate the ports with different voltages and the light should come on.
But as soon as you got an SDI cable in the mix - say from a HDMI/SDI converter to a VF - the switch does nothing anymore and the light stays on all the time, and there is some extra current on the SDI, that can fry your ports.

I'm an electronic idiot, so I have no idea what's going on here and why, it's just what I heard so far.

Ours is legit, straight from TILTA, but has that same issue... but it's not been a problem... you've just got to remember to disconnect the cable from the camera as it will continue to drain the battery even when 'off'.

I've never encountered any problem with the Tilta, but I'm not sure if there's something wrong with the battery plate. Anyone uses this from Movcam?
http://www.ebay.es/itm/261436655015?ssP ... 1423.l2649

Lanparte one looks very fragile. Any other quality options?

Thanks

I heard a lot of guys have trouble with that plate.
Normally the switch should activate the ports with different voltages and the light should come on.
But as soon as you got an SDI cable in the mix - say from a HDMI/SDI converter to a VF - the switch does nothing anymore and the light stays on all the time, and there is some extra current on the SDI, that can fry your ports.

I'm an electronic idiot, so I have no idea what's going on here and why, it's just what I heard so far.

So I should be fine with it as long as I don't run any power from the V-mount through a SDI cable? I run a SDI cable to a HD-SDI monitor powered by batteries on the back of the monitor and only a D-tap from the V-mount to power the camera, is that safe?

powering the monitor and camera, I think this creates a ground loop. I'm no electrician, but that may be the issue?

Hi
Just thought I'd warn people about  Tilta battery plates ( i bought one on ebay , so have no idea if its genuine )
Since frying a few monitors and a couple of camera's it started to dawn on me that the problem may be something to do with the battery plate .
After twiddling around a bit with my multi-meter i found that when I was using the Tilta battery plate with its power switch in the OFF position , there was a voltage of around 12 to 13 v across the SDI connection between the camera and the monitor .
This is when i have the monitor powered by the D-tap and camera powered by the 12v outlet.
On turning the battery plate switch to the ON position the voltage leak disappeared .

I first suspected something was amiss on observing the led on the plate light up , when the power switch was off and i connected the bnc between camera and monitor .

I tested powering the camera and battery with another vlock plate ( by different manufacturer) and this stray voltage anomaly didnt happen -

Today I took the blown monitor in for repair and a technician ran several tests on the battery plate
to confirm that there was indeed some kind of short circuit fault in the circuit board and power switch . And this was likely at the heart of the cause of fried monitors and cameras.

So there appears to be a fault with the Tilta battery plate I bought on ebay .
The voltage leak is a fault either by design or in manufacture , something you wouldnt expect or naturally test for .

My Black Magic MFT camera is back at Black Magic uk being tested and repaired .
I have to say everyone has been very helpful and very communicative in this investigation.

I think it may be possible to re-wire the battery plate  and avoid the switch  and circuit board which i think is just a voltage regulator i dont need (as i wont use the other outlets ) . As my other plate is very simple and doesnt have this in and works fine.
I do like the design of the Tilta plate and ergonomically it works beautifully on my rig . So if i can just solve the wiring problem all will be great . And i can hopefully feel more reassured using it on shoots without embarrassing moments of having to explain duff monitoring situations whilst having cold sweats .

cheers
Marcus

Thanks for posting this, Marcus. I've had my suspicions about Tilta plates from the beginning, and have never ever used anything like this on any camera I've owned.

That video up of the 2.5K smoking, I was damned-near one hundred percent sure they were using ebay power on it and now I feel like that's exactly what happened.

If you're looking for reliable power, just go Viewfactor. I've had two running all of my cameras and only ran into one issue where the cable failed, since they have switched their cables and in the year and a half post they're still powering my rigs on a constant basis.

This is good info for people to have... cheap power is great until it's not. =[

This is when i have the monitor powered by the D-tap and camera powered by the 12v outlet.
On turning the battery plate switch to the ON position the voltage leak disappeared .

I'm pretty sure there are two different models of Tilta battery plate. I have the specific branded BMCC one that comes with a p-tap power cable for the BMCC, not the 12v outlet like you said you have here. I bought this model:

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1 ... m_for.html

Did you buy the generic non-BMCC model? I wonder if they are that different?

So I should be fine with it as long as I don't run any power from the V-mount through a SDI cable? I run a SDI cable to a HD-SDI monitor powered by batteries on the back of the monitor and only a D-tap from the V-mount to power the camera, is that safe?

Not sure, since I don't have one, but what Rob said, it probably generates a ground loop. Get a voltmeter and doublecheck everything, also if the SDI cable get's extra juice.

Lanparte one looks very fragile. Any other quality options?

German engineering:
http://www.bebob.de/product_info.php?la ... ts_id=287&

US engineering:
http://www.viewfactor.net/products/blac ... hinge.html

Both are great quality options.

This is my tilta plate. It is the same as the DSLR version, it just ships with different cables.

As you can see, the issue I have with mine is the plastic pin protector has broken.



As for the insides....



The DTAP connector is directly pulled from the battery connection. This is why that connector is always powered and the power switch has no effect.



I use switronix battery with built-in DTAPs...which is where I plug my camera. Directly to the source. I use the titla's DTAP for my Alphatron EVF. The only accessory I need to run off of the Titla plate's voltage regulated ports, is my audio mixer, which to date, I have had no issue.



Now I'm no electrical engineer...but could someone explain to me how I might be getting power spikes through my SDI when this is my configuration? I have a voltmeter and can test it, just tell me where/how to test it.

Since my BMCC and my EVF are both running directly off the battery, any power spikes would be the battery's fault, correct? Not the plate. I'm just asking.

Would love to hear from a BMCC engineer or even Switronix....


*EDIT - if all you care about is the DTAP port, you could cut/cap the wires running to the board and that would eliminate any chance of sh***y voltage board messing things up, no?

I'm certain I fried my cineroid EVF because of the Tilta plate. I had the EVF plugged into on of the smaller round coax outlets and the camera into the p-tap on the plate. The EVF was connected to the camera via SDI.

It may be a ground loop issue. The solution then would be not to connect devices that share a ground to the same circuit using different voltages.

IE: An EVF at 8v coax and the camera at 14.8V P-Tap and then connecting those with the ground of the SDI cable.

It seems silly to me that BMD isn't protecting both the camera and stuff connected to it by either using a small resistor of about 10Ω or a a ground loop isolation transformer in the ground circuits of the periphery connectors on the camera... Is this a common thing with other high priced cameras like the alexa or F65? Is it a foreign concept to connect monitors and EVFs to a camera and have them all powered by different voltages? (that's a legitimate question, not trying to be a troll)

Since my BMCC and my EVF are both running directly off the battery, any power spikes would be the battery's fault, correct? Not the plate. I'm just asking.

Are you looping your audio back into your camera? If so that would be a different voltage running across that ground and could be causing the "suspected" ground loop issue.

I'm certain I fried my cineroid EVF because of the Tilta plate. I had the EVF plugged into on of the smaller round coax outlets and the camera into the p-tap on the plate. The EVF was connected to the camera via SDI.

It may be a ground loop issue. The solution then would be not to connect devices that share a ground to the same circuit using different voltages.

IE: An EVF at 8v coax and the camera at 14.8V P-Tap and then connecting those with the ground of the SDI cable.

It seems silly to me that BMD isn't protecting both the camera and stuff connected to it by either using a small resistor of about 10Ω or a a ground loop isolation transformer in the ground circuits of the periphery connectors on the camera... Is this a common thing with other high priced cameras like the alexa or F65? Is it a foreign concept to connect monitors and EVFs to a camera and have them all powered by different voltages? (that's a legitimate question, not trying to be a troll)

Until someone opens up a BM camera, we'll never know for sure...

the same topic was discussed on BMCuser, search "Faulty Tilta plate"

I think the blue light indicates when power is being drawn either directly by the dtap or by the voltage regulators.

EVF/dtap unplugged, switch off, LED is off.
EVF/dtap plugged (EVF powered on or not), LED is on.
EVF/dtap unplugged, switch off, LED is off.
EVF/dtap unplugged, switch on, LED is on

FWIW

Marcus!

Thank you very much for posting this. I had posted another thread about the SDI ports burning out on all my camera's and was about to post this same warning. I too found voltage spikes when using a multimeter to the V mount plate.

Now any suggestions on a good reliable plate?

Now any suggestions on a good reliable plate?

viewtopic.php?f=2&t=23348&view=unread#p147062

Marcus!

Thank you very much for posting this. I had posted another thread about the SDI ports burning out on all my camera's and was about to post this same warning. I too found voltage spikes when using a multimeter to the V mount plate.

Now any suggestions on a good reliable plate?

Can you please share where you took your readings on the plate? What were the spikes you saw?

I think I fried my Ikan D5W off of the 12v barrel pin on the Tilta plate. Luckily Ikan customer service is great and they replaced my monitor but I'll never use any of those barrel connectors. I just use the Dtaps, one on the battery itself to my camera and the one on the plate to my Alphatron. Odd thing is the electronics tech at Hollywood Camera checked out the plate with loads applied and found nothing. The only variable he didn't do was the SDI's plugged in so it seems that might be a constant.

Could it be that my Tilta Battery plate is so faulty that it actually works?

(Knock on wood) My Tilta battery plate works properly. I have the BM4K connected to the 12v outlet and the Cineroid to the 8v outlet (I don't like dtaps as you can plug it in backwards and reverse the polarity, frying gear, if you don't pay enough attention).
No power is delivered to either the camera or the EVF when the switch is in OFF position. The blue LED doesn't turn on either unless you actually switch the whole thing on.

Bought it on ebay along with the cage, handles, shoulder pad, follow focus and mattebox. Still think they have awesome gear.