Capture Pilot and PocketWizards

turbo

• March 30, 2012 10:05

Hi,

I haven't done much testing on this, but there seems to be a serious technical problem: whenever we are shooting using wireless flash transmitters like pocketwizards and those profoto things, the capture pilot on the ipad will behave poor: it will disconnect and/or is not able to connect at all. sometimes it's just very slow.
i've got bluetooth turned off on the mac and the ipad and i'm creating an ad-hoc network from my macbook pro 8,2.

When the photographer is shooting using sunbouncers or continuous light, it works fine!

I'm not really able to do any testing on this, since i'm a digital operator working with many different clients (and different equipment). But maybe we could create a whitelist for good working settings and gear combos and a blacklist?
PocketWizard Plus II Channel 1 would be on the blacklist.

Cheers,

Torben

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  Drew Altdo

  • March 30, 2012 11:05

  Torben,
  Technically there should not be a relationship regarding these units wireless communication.
  The Pocket Wizards use a Radio Frequency to communicate at 433 MHz (for Germany).
  A wireless router would start communication in the 5 GHz frequency and the iPad I believe is dual band (2.4GHz and 5GHz) As such, the two should never interfere.
  However, it is more than possible for one (if not all) of those units to be operating outside of the specific Frequency they advertise. More than likely however, interference is caused by some unshielded power source, like a strobe pack, disto (if one is being used) or a microwave 😂 .
  The best way to troubleshoot this is to eliminate the Radio Slaves and use a cable sync with IR slaves. If that's not possible, try to switch bands on the router.

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  Paul Steunebrink

  • March 30, 2012 11:34

  My first attempt in this case would be to eliminate the ad-hoc network setup: it is by default the most unreliable setup you can create (although it can work fine in lost of situations, I know) and more prone to interference.
  
  As a digital tech you might have a spare wireless router in your bag. Connect the MacBook Pro to the router wired over Ethernet, and the iPad wireless (obviously) for the most solid of possible connections.
  If this does not help, increase the distance between the iPad and the PocketWizard and the flashes and flash generator to minimize interference and check again.

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