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I might have f-ed up. I’m a producer for an in-house agency and I had the sweet idea of consolidating all battery types and to power everything off of D-tap (p-tap) using v-mount batteries. Here’s what I bought:

Batteries: Here

Vmount plate for camera: Here

Follow focus: Here

Monitor: Here

Wireless transmitter: Here

So I have all of the appropriate d-tap cables and whatnot, and my plan was to power all of this off of one v-mount battery, but it’s looking like I might not be able to do it. When I plugged in everything, I got a spark somewhere on the cage of my c300, but nothing fried. What am I missing? How do large productions run tons of accessories off of one battery? I’m hoping I didn’t get in over my head with this. Any advice or critique is welcome.

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  • I'm no AC, but I've run nearly that much stuff off of 140Wh blueshapes. No teradek in our case, but it was for an Epic Dragon. Sparks make me think something's not wired right. Could you share details about how everything was connected, and what kinds of cables?
    – Jason Conrad
    Jan 28, 2021 at 9:36
  • I think I might have solved it. I was using an unregulated cable for the monitor. I should be using a d-tap with a dummy battery, but instead I was using the barrel input which is only good for 12v. It’s a good thing my battery was only a quarter charged because I could have fried the whole thing.
    – Wulfgar
    Jan 29, 2021 at 15:18

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To anyone who has similar questions, I think I solved it. Pay attention to voltage inputs to your devices. The blackmagic monitor I was using has a power input of 12v using the two-pin barrel connector. The barrel connecter d-tap cable I was using was unregulated therefore it was pushing out more than 12v. What I need is a l-series dummy battery connected to d-tap regulated down to 8v or so, which do exist. The only reason my entire system didn’t fry was because my battery was only about a quarter charged. If it was full, I would have sent almost 18v to the monitor, probably killing it and maybe some other stuff along the way. Check input voltages on everything you’re planning on connecting to your battery.

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