Paul C. Buff, Inc. Technical Forum

Something abnormal here. You should be getting reliable firing from the CC up to about 160' line of sight or 50-75' through walls. Call tech support if you can - we'll get it working right.

My to do list includes tweaking the antenna on CC to get more range out of it.

My short experience with the CC unit has been that after the LCD goes to sleep, pressing either fire button on the CC will fail to fire the remote PCB flash units for about 3 seconds, no matter how many times you try. It seems as though the CC and flash units are doing some housekeeping after a wakeup call, and will not fire until that housekeeping is complete. Other than that initial wakeup delay, all units seem to be ready and willing to flash as fast as called upon until they either need to reload their capacitors for a second or two, or the system is left inactive for as many seconds as the LCD on the CC is set to remain on.

That is perfectly acceptable to me if the timing is cast in concrete, but (there is always a but....), it would be nice if the CC allowed the user to define how long the lighting setup can remain inactive before the system goes into that apparent sleep mode as a separate function from the LCD sleep timer. I would prefer to be able to tinker with my lights, and take meter readings of the changes without having to limit myself to less than a minute of tweaking before I could no longer pop the flash units with a single press of a button. System readiness should not be tied to the LCD state of the CC unless the user has stock in a battery company.

In any event, the CC is the by far the top studio photo tool inspiration of the past three decades....


Of course, I have only had the pleasure of using my own CC controlled system for about a week now, so even if I missed an explanation/adjustment for the system sleep delay on page two of the manual, I plead insanity due to sensory overload from that little CC box. It's amazing......

Voyager

CC purposely does nothing but wake up on the first button push so you don't accidentally change things. But it shouldn't be anywhere near three seconds. But it does fire instantly from the camera or sync input while asleep. (The LCD doesn't come on when fired this way.)

Firmware upgrade will probably clean up the issues you are having, but we haven't released the firmware upgrade quite yet because of some bugs in performing the actual update. This should be solved quite soon.

As you know, CC is a whole lot of technology in a first release product from a relatively small company. Expect constant improvement over time via firmware updates

Has there been any consideration to opening up the source code to the CyberCommander? Using an Open Source development model for it?

Just a thought. Since I work on Linux and other open source software projects I like the idea.

But you might have some proprietary info in the source code that you don't want to share. Understandable if you do.

Open source on CC code would invite every competitor to rip it off.

That wasn't really an issue, just an observation. I'm so pleased with your CC jewel and the unheard of level of control it offers right now, that the timing of that wake-up shot is already just a routine part of my workflow with the system. Nothing urgent at all.

With Vagabond II, CC, PLM, and now Einstein, you just hit your fourth consecutive "out of the park" home run against the best pitches of the best Pitchers in the world (so to speak). I'll leave the timing and details of the firmware release, or whatever you choose to swing at next up to you :).

Voyager

Believe me it isn't easy. Been working 14/7 for two years now and can't find competent engineering help (got one good engineer starting Monday). Vendors let you down regularly, Chinese speak English but can't design or innovate . . . you ask them what one and one is and they say "The weather is nice - we wish to do business with your esteemed company". USA vendors don't even respond most of the time and can no longer compete.

I don't get it . . . we're super successful and growing every minute in the "declining manufacturing sector" It's not that hard if you remember old time values and have an innovative outlook. But no way am I going to become a Wall Street company - it would kill us.

We're in a niche almost unto ourselves . . . our development and products are not in the standard curriculum, nor is our marketing. Plus Congress is dead set on destroying US companies like ours.

Thanks so much for the support.

I agree, I love the CC. It has a few quirks, but I'm quite happy with mine so far. I might send it in to get checked out but I'm confident in the service you guys provide - hence all of my strobist money I spend goes to you and will continue to go to you.

I'm excited about the Einstein units. I've been holding off on adding a couple more lights to my studio until their announcement. I plan on buying a couple here in a couple of months and can't wait to play with them.

Keep up the great work Paul, your efforts and countless hours of labor are very much appreciated by your customers. I also appreciate your staff, they've been nothing but pure pleasures to work with.