ARRI SR2 - Camera fires as soon as a battery is pugged in

[Valentin Meneveau]

 HELP NEEDED 

 

Hey everyone, I come today with a bit of worrying problem. I will delve into details here to give you the full picture:

Last week, as I was on a shoot, my trusted ARRI SR2 suddenly stopped rolling and wouldn’t turn back on.
Under time and financial pressure, we started troubleshooting for what could be behind the fault.
This as lead me to take the battery adapter and converter apart and test the circuit for faulty cable with an amp meter.

It turns out the actual culprit was the lever trigger and a possible loose connection inside the body. Fortunately enough, simply toggling the lever harder popped the connection back on and the camera came back to life just in time to finish our shoot.

HOWEVER - the main issue only begins now.

As I was putting the battery adapter back together, I inadvertently swapped the 1 (-) and 4 (+) of my XLR plug.
Although I didn’t hear any sound or notice any sign of damage, the camera now power on but does so as soon as a battery is plugged in.
The SR2 also seems to roll much faster than the usual 24/25 fps.

 

I obviously understand that this is a gross negligence from my part - I am now desperate to get it fixed on time for another shoot and would need your advice and help finding a good service center in London or the UK.

Thanks for reading this rant, it’s been a pretty stressful week.

Val

[Dom Jaeger]

 

[Valentin Meneveau]

Cheers Dom,

Richard Hester's name came up quite a lot on other groups and forums. I'm trying to get in touch asap!

In the meantime - I have had some insightful answers needing further investigation. One of which was from @Tyler Purcell

I hope this can be helpful to anyone encountering a similar issue in the future.

Quote

 

This is called “runaway” condition. It’s when the 5v circuit that controls the pulse stops working and the motor runs at full voltage with no pulse. The fact the fuse didn’t blow is weird to me. I’d check both fuses first. If you have a multimeter, yank the fuses out and check them. They’re in the see through cap.

Generally when this happens it’s a transistor that’s failed. So if the fuses are good, then it needs to have board repair done.

The best board guy I know is at AM Camera here in Valencia California. He has a jig which he uses to diagnose the boards and it gets him excellent results. 9 times out of 10 it can be repaired no problem.