ICP cert batteries depleting

[Harold Hallikainen]

These batteries really do not like reverse (charging) current. In our media block, UL required all sorts of documentation proving that there would be no current going back into the battery.

Harold

[Carsten Kurz]

Yup. I heard that inrush current during initial balancing between two cells with different capacity can exhibit a considerable amount of energy. They should only be connected for the least possible time. And if a temporary bridge cell is used, it may be advisable to have a series resistor on it.

https://hackaday.io/project/11864-tr...2-years-cr2032 (some interesting Panasonic links in it)

As the cell voltage can easily and safely be measured during a regular maintenance before one considers a swap, we should probably collect some data here to get a better idea. Leo wrote that the cell voltage of the bricked ICP he replaced was about 2.48 volts, and the projector was from 2011. Has anyone ever seen a clear text manufacturing date on an ICP?

In the case of the ICP cert battery, I would think the voltage drop over time is slow - as these batteries live 10+ years, the power consumption must be minimal. On the CAT745, the battery lifetime is much shorter, the drain must be much higher. Even the huge retrofit cell that Dolby solders on when doing reserialisation lasts a fraction of the ICP cert cell.

As I wrote earlier, I have one measurement of an ICP cell in a Kinoton DCP30 SX-II from a 2012 install at 2.98 volts. That's much more than I expected after around 10 years.

[Leo Enticknap]

It's going to depend on the proportion of those ten years that the projector was powered up, I guess. If it was on 24/7 (apart from brief periods for maintenance, lamp swapouts, etc.), I'd expect the voltage to be higher than if it was installed in, say, the Egyptian when I worked there, where the digital projector was only powered for around 20 hours in a typical week.

Incidentally, I am scheduled to visit an indie arthouse in California on Tuesday, to check over the installation prior to anticipated OK to reopen. This was also a 2011 installation: DP2K-20C, DSS200/cat862, and Enigma board. It has been completely powered down since March 18 last year, despite my flagging up to them that it should be powered up periodically to maintain the batteries.

Anyways, the manager went in yesterday and powered everything up, and reported to me that they seem to be OK: the server said "Please select a show for playback" with the projector powered. Given that the encryption mode is TLS (i.e. there would be "Error connecting to media block" if the cat862 cert had gone, or "Error securing connection from show store to projector" if the Enigma were bad), it looks like the cat862, Enigma, and ICP have all survived. That ICP must be on borrowed time, now, though. Before the shutdown, they were talking about upgrading to a laser projector: I'm going to advise them to leave the projector powered 24/7 until they make that decision, and if they decide to keep the 20C in service, budget to be able to replace the ICP at any moment.

[Steve Guttag]

I've found that the CAT862 FAR outlives its projected super-cap life. I recently replaced an Enigma that failed (no communication, not just a dead battery as the projector had been powered up) and the replacement had missed its recharge date by a month...still good. That said, I've had Enigmas fail to charge properly or make even 6-months. Depending on who you ask, an Enigma should charge anywhere from 48-96-hours every 6-months. The problem is, you have NO WAY of knowing just how depleted an Enigma is and I suspect that if you do 48-hour charging every 6, you are not achieving a full charge so with each cycle, it depletes a bit more. Having lost a couple Enigmas, we've switched to 4-month and 3-4 day charge cycles.

The IMS series of servers use the super-cap method and since the Dolby docking station allows one to see the charging LED, i can tell you, it takes, easily 96-hours to fully charge one. We opened a 10-plex last year. We received the IMS3000s about 2-months prior to actually commissioning the projectors. Within a month after that, but prior to opening to the public (due to C19 restrictions), 2 units dropped due to lost certificates so who knows how long it was before Dolby had them on the charging rack. I'm sure C19 has messed up everyone's charging cycles. All projectors were then left on for days to ensure all IMSes were charged up and none have dropped since. We now, upon receiving an IMS, charge them immediately (since there is always that delay between receiving, commissioning and even if the theatre opens, it is on a reduced schedule, typically). We're also now powering all systems every day for an hour to ensure everything gets charged during these reduced/no schedule times.

I'm sure C19 will leave its scars on things like the ICP (bringing it back full circle) and its certificate battery.

I'm also curious as to how Christie and NEC treat the Enigma whey they are in the standby state? Do they keep the Enigma up? How about the IMS/IMB? Christie doesn't run its fan(s) in standby but NEC does leave the AC ON fan on while in standby...presumably to remove heat from something like the Enigma (which does get hot when powered) or the IMB/IMS?

[Carsten Kurz]

I guess, the older the rechargeable cells on the Enigma, the less capacity they have. They may be good for more than 6 months at the beginning, but much less in an old machine. I assume they also become pretty hot because everything is encapsulated. So, the older, and the more shows per day, the faster they will probably fade.

I also guess we should not believe that every one of these cert batteries have a secondary support voltage during regular operation. This assumption is of course true for all rechargeable cells, but not necessarily for all the standard non-rechargeable coin cells. I wouldn't be surprised if the ICP cert battery is all on it's own. If the current consumption is small enough, it makes little sense to have a second path from the supply. Especially since such measures may impose a higher risk of failure. If the ICP had such a runtime backup circuit, once would only have to power it while swapping the battery (how difficult that would be).

If I remember right, some manufacturers have given specific hints towards backup/supply schemes in their recommended shutdown procedures.

[Carsten Kurz]

I'm also curious as to how Christie and NEC treat the Enigma whey they are in the standby state? Do they keep the Enigma up? How about the IMS/IMB? Christie doesn't run its fan(s) in standby but NEC does leave the AC ON fan on while in standby...presumably to remove heat from something like the Enigma (which does get hot when powered) or the IMB/IMS?

This is from a NEC extended shutdown bulletin:

'TI Interface board (GORE PWB) for Series 1 projectors and ENIGMA PWBs for Series 2 projectors need to be recharged at least every 6 months for 48 hours continuously.
If they are fitted in to a projector for charging, the projector needs to be in a running condition for 48 hours continuously, light off is OK, but they cannot be charged with the projector in standby.'

So, for NEC projectors and according to NEC, standby is not sufficient.

[Leo Enticknap]

Yeah, NECs don't power the Enigma in standby. Don't know about Christie.

How about the IMS/IMB?

Good question. On the Dolby IMS2000 and 3000 in an NEC projector, if the projector is put into standby, the IMS will go into a semi-hibernation mode. Its web UI will say "I am currently half asleep - do you want to wake me fully up?" If you choose to wake up The Gimp and bring him out of the basement, you can ingest, build SPLs, etc., while the projector itself remains in standby mode. GDC IMSes, however, are completely shut down, as is the Dolby cat745.

I don't know if the IMS2000 and 3000 are still charging the cert battery when they're in this semi hibernate mode.

So the NEC's firmware has the ability to send full power to the option slot when the projector is in standby: it's up to the designers of the IMB or IMS as to whether to use that feature or not, I guess.

Most Series 2 and later Barcos power the slot fully unless the projector is physically powered off using the flip switch on the side or back. They don't have a standby mode as such: either they are card cage on but lamp off, or card cage and lamp on. The exceptions that I know of are L and S series projectors: they do have a standby mode that does cut power to the card cage. I currently have a DP2K-10S with an ICMP-X in our test room that I am doing some GPIO experimentation with for a customer, and observed all the lights go out on the ICMP-X when it was put into standby mode. The SP4K's "Greta Thunberg mode" (they call it eco mode) powers down the option slot, too.

Some Series 2 Christies have a "Keep IMB powered when in standby" option that you can choose or not, but it's only available with Christie's own IMB.

[Steve Guttag]

In quasi-related news. Barco just issued InfoT1501, which states, from now on, all S2 projectors will be issued with their new ICP-D (which first debut on the S4 projectors) in lieu of TI's ICP. No mention was made about availability of the original ICP for a service replacement (or for projectors with extended warranties on what module would be used for the replacement).

There are ramifications there. The ICP-D is, for all intents and purposes, the ICP portion of the ICMP-X. This means that it has two HDMI (2.0) ports that disable the DVI ports a projector may have. The ICP-D does not support HDSDI based systems (so probably Barco is probably going to hold back TI ICPs to ensure they can provide support for existing S2 systems). The ICP-D also only supports a handful of 3rd party IMB/IMS servers (current and recently discontinued ones, like the IMS2000) so again, the TI ICP will be needed for legacy support.

If you do image scaling on the ICP (like zooming in on a part of an image for say some letterboxed SD content), watch out on the ICP-D...it can do it but the settings don't match the original ICP. Last I checked, the ICP-D does not work with the "Anamorphic Factor" if you are doing an anamorphic lens (yes those are used in some installations and do save a bit of light on constant height screens). I have not checked to see how the ICP-D deals with anamorphic content (e.g. DVD 16x9). The realities are, DVDs and standard definition content is rarely used by most every site now such that probably if you HAVE to support it, a suitable scaler could be used (if the current player you have doesn't do it already). So this would be an extreme minority niche situation (how many people may have to handle say a D-Beta with anamorphic 16x9? Of those, how many don't have an ImagePro or some such scaler to address the image before feeding the projector?

[Carsten Kurz]

That would mean, the ICP-D is Barcos 'solution' to the upcoming ICP battery problem. And the 'solution' part is probably that it is a bit lower in cost than a TI ICP.
A real benefit though is probably that as a manufacturer of the ICP-D, Barco is able to reserialize them on their own. Well, that would only be a benefit if Barco actually did this for a reasonable price. What they charge currently for reserialising/replacing an ICMP/-X does not make this probable.

Now, what type of battery does the ICP-D use...?

edit: Looks like the same setup as used on the ICMP cert battery - two 2477 cell holders, so, one active battery, one empty for a swap-over.

[Steve Guttag]

Carsten, it really isn't a solution because if you have an HDSDI system, or even a non-recent IMB/IMS system (e.g., the IMS1000 is not supported, yet, if ever or a CAT745...etc.) this is not a viable replacement for those. Hence, I bet that Barco is going to "hoard" TI ICPs to ensure they can support the 10-years worth of existing S2 systems out there...including those delivered in 2020...so they have a bit of a support left on them. I think our last HDSDI systems went in around 2015 since both Dolby and GDC were still supplying them. Heck the GDC SX-2001 was still available new just a few years ago. That is the way we went in a Drive-In as it needed to be robust and survive extended down-time during the off seasons. Enigmas just need power within 6-months and traditional mediablocks last much longer than IMB based batteries (particularly when the IMB is going to be off for long periods of time).

[Leo Enticknap]

Yes, the ICP-D uses a CR2477N battery. Identical setup to the ICMP, as Carsten notes.

Another gotcha with the ICP-D is that you need get a license file from Cinionic to marry it to a given IMB or IMS. They will need the serial of the IMB or IMS to issue the license. Without the license, it will give you 200 "grace hours," and then no more until you upload the license file.

[Steve Guttag]

You actually get the license from the OEM (i.e. Dolby or GDC). However, once the file is loaded, then the CCB keeps track of things too...SO...if you an ICP-D swap, you don't need to get another license.

[Elia Orselli]

Yesterday I gave a fist look at an ICP we have in our laboratory. It seems that V- is common to both cert and clock batteries, and it's available on pin 2 of J29. V+ is available with the trace already indicated.

[Carsten Kurz]

Thanks Elia - do you know how old this ICP is, and did you measure the cell voltage?

[Marcel Birgelen]

Yesterday I gave a fist look at an ICP we have in our laboratory. It seems that V- is common to both cert and clock batteries, and it's available on pin 2 of J29. V+ is available with the trace already indicated.

I guess there is little hope for V+ to be available on that same connector?