We have about 20 of these cameras in service in a college educational setting and practically all of them, save 4 exhibit the cylinder lock error. What exactly does this error mean? Can I fix it in house?
Obviously these cameras are getting sort of old now, but they seem to work well for awhile and then they ask the student to press reset. After pressing reset, the camera displays a screen that says, "Needs to be Serviced." If you let the camera sit for a short time, turn it on, the message is gone and the camera will work for the next couple of weeks. Do the error codes need to be cleared out, much like an automobile's check engine light? Any information you can provide would be helpful.
When you press the reset button, the first thing the camera does is a self-test of the mechanism. "cylinder lock" is displayed when the video rec/playback head drum (cylinder) motor does not operate or operates intermittently. this is usually caused by a poor connection on the small cable that connects the head drum assembly with the main control circuitry inside the camera. disassembly of the camera is necessary to clean and re-seat this cable, along with the cable that carries the video information to the head drum. I have repaired several of these cameras with this problem. it's not difficult, but an inexperienced repair person can do more damage than help if they're not careful.
The cables in question are two flat ribbon cables from the circuit board to the drum and mechanism assembly. The only thing that needs to be removed to clean them is the camera case. They may be accessed with a pair of long-nose pliers; by applying contact cleaner and re-seating the cables, the problem is solved.
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This is usually caused by an oxidized, misaligned or defective Audio/Video drum. You can try running a cleaning tape through the camera. If this does not solve the problem the camera will need to be serviced by a qualified service technician.
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Thanks for the quick response. I realized afterwards that most of the advice for this camera points to the connection, I just thought I would throw out the error code and see if anyone knew what it meant.
So, I removed the camera casing and disconnected and removed the top circuit board. Underneath is another board, which I carefully disconnected from all the ribbon-like connections. I used some isopropyl alcohol on a q-tip to clean up the ribbon connectors and reconnected everything. I still get the "F05" error.
During this tear down, I did not disconnect two connections to the bottom circuit board. Both connections, one on the bottom, the other on the top, were actual wires, not ribbon cable. These wires were covered with hot glue. The service center had told a previous employee here that 90% of the problem is a loose connection with these cameras and that they usually clean them up, re-seat the connection and hot glue it to the board. Should I have disconnected those wires and re-seated them? That's really the only thing I didn't mess with.
Thanks again. Either I didn't clean it well enough or the camera is really locking up. I got 13 others that I can try! These are pretty old and have seen quite a few students pass through the program, so I won't rule out the fact that it may be more than the cable.
The first camera I tried this on has a black screen, no picture. You can, however, see time code and all the on-screen displays so I could still get the "F05" error code. I tried swapping out some two of the ribbon cables to the lens from another camera with no luck. So, maybe I will try the procedure on another camera before I throw in the towel with the idea of repairing them myself.
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