Spectra Stopped Working

[Berniece Domnick]

Heyladies and gents, my name is Pease (surname), I work for Luxottica Retail at the Memphis LOM Lab (Luxottica Optical Manufacturing) and I an asset protection Team Lead. I have been having issues with one of my PTZ cameras outside. It's just stuck in a position and I've tried looking for manuals or troubleshooting ideas, and none of the ones I have found have really worked.

First thing I would do is cycle power to the camera - on power-up, it should display the comm settings on-screen, and run through a short tour (zoom in/out and turn around once) - this would confirm whether the camera itself is functioning.

Well, it's not in a set pattern, we usually have the two outside cameras criss-crossing our parking lot...that way we can control when we are in the office w/out doing the presets. It's mainly to try and catch folks breaking into cards.

Now for the most part, I have just tried turning the server on and off, and disabling the camera and enabling the camera in the system as well...but I haven't figured out how to power down the camera itself w/out going up on the roof to do that.....I just googled tips and it didn't really give me a lot of information, but the information they did give, I tried to no avail.

It's VERY likely that the power supply itself is not on the roof - it would most commonly be in a phone room, electrical room, or server room, or some other type of utility space in the building. It may be just an open-frame transformer rather than a box or enclosure:

Cycling power to the camera the first troubleshooting steps I'd try in most cases, and I'd suggest doing that next to confirm that the camera itself is working properly. Sometimes a camera will stop working and simply powering it off and on will get everything working properly again.

I just recently had a Spectra III that stopped working properly - it ran its preset tour fine, and would go through its initialization properly after a power cycle, but I couldn't control it at all. I opened it up and discovered water was getting into it and had dripped on the interface board behind the camera and damaged it. We're just waiting for the customer to decide whether they want to replace that board.

"Configure failed" during power-up indicates the camera itself is failing - not an issue with the signal wiring (there's the very VERY slight possibility that extreme noise on the signal line could cause malfunctioning of the camera, which could be tested by disconnecting the signal leads from the camera, but that's maybe one chance in 10,000).

I think the camera has failed completely, after it configure failed message being up for about 15 mins, now all I am getting is a black screen. This is the same camera we've had to replace a couple of times already, so I would not be surprised if its just kaput.

If you have a tech available, the replacement is pretty straight forward. You can purchase parts from Pelco or from Time Lapse Supply - Or you can send the PTZ dome drive(s) to Pelco or an independent repair company. I recommend Moore's Electronics in northern California: -repair.com/.

I actually did miss the previous information about the 'failure', my bad. I had experienced in actually a 1/2 dozen spectras an eeprom failure which would either cause non-functioning and/or video malfunction. Or, as stated power supplies are also an issue with some spectras and of course moisture.

Almost funny: I had an army base I picked up in North Cal, one day they told me there's always rain drops on the dome, I got out to the base and tilted the camera down (yes, surprisingly still operated) it was like looking down into a fish bowl. Although the previous company (by all appearance) had installed what looked like a very good install, moisture was able to collect into the dome unit (about .5" worth).

I had installed parapet mounts on the very edge of a building, with specially made mounts. The bottom of the actual mount (pipe) was right above the roof gutter, well my domes continuously fogged right in front of wherever the lens was pointed then would clear up, as the day went on (I have always respected pelco tech support), but all tech support could give me was the domes weren't sealed properly. After a lot of headaches, I finally realized that moist air was rising up the pipe and into the dome. Anyway, expansion foam resolved the problem.

The ends of the Pelco factory made parapet mounts (PP350, PP450) are just open pipe as well, we do the same thing (spray foam) to seal a piece of flex conduit into it. Besides moisture, bugs can get all the way into the dome unless the parapet mount is sealed.

jpease I agree with other people on here. When the fans go in the spectra cameras its not long before either the power board dies or the drive gives out which is why you can't control it. The black screen means you may have not got it reseated good. I have been messing with these camera's awhile and I still have a fun time with some of them, and I have broken a few of the clips a couple of times. You can send the 3 off for repair but your next camera will be a spectra 4. And depending on the mount like if maybe you started with a spectra 2 then went to a 3 the 4 will not mount in the same with out some change to the power board that the camera snaps into.

So I bought this polaroid spectra on ebay, and a pack of old expired film to go with it. Apparently, the batteries for these cameras reside inside the film packs, with the idea that you'd never run out of juice since you'd always be popping in fresh ones every time you reload the film. Of course this doesn't work when the film supply dries up and all that is left is 10-year-old expired stuff... anyway, so I loaded it up and of course it doesn't work. Some lights come on but the camera dies when I try to take a picture. [aside: I ordered some impossible project spectra film just now, but I'd still like to shoot the expired stock I do have]

Now, someone somewhere in the world has got to have thought of hacking together an external battery pack for the spectra. So you can use old film but not be reliant on old batteries. But in all my internet searching, I haven't found anything! I've soldered together a makeshift 4AA battery pack and have been vainly trying to jimmy some voltage into the camera, but nothing I've tried has yielded consistent results - I got the flash to fire once, and then the camera stopped working again. Does anyone here know of some secret-sauce way to rig an external battery pack for the Spectra, perchance?

Anyone?

My guess is that you can make a "charger" out of an old wall wart power supply of 6 volts or more, then try recharging the battery until it gets warm, (a small amount of electrical knowledge is useful here..)then shoot the film promptly...that may temporarily solve the power problem, but the chemicals are probably going to be pretty crunchy if the film is old enough for the battery to fail.

Hi there, Tuan. Impossible Corp (a group of former Polaroid employees) makes fresh B&W film for Polaroid Spectra, 600-type, and SX-70-type cameras; the film contains an integral battery, just like the Polaroid film did. The Impossible film works great in my Spectra cameras! It's quirky, sepia-toned stuff, but lovely. You can order directly from: www.theimpossibleproject.com

It seems like the chemicals in my old packs of spectra were mostly crusts, so external power would indeed have been pointless anyway. I've ordered some modern spectra stock from the impossible project instead (:

I rigged an external battery pack to a Spectra in my conversion of the camera from Polaroid to regular negative film. I was able to run wires outside the camera that attached to the terminals on the inside. Probably not the way to go since you will also have to have the film pack in there as well. I'd drill some small holes in the botton of the camera where you could attach wires to the terminals. You would have to probably wire glue the wires on and reinforce with epoxy. One everything is in place you can make it light tight with black paint (probably not required). Here is the link to my hack if it helps:

I found a 1200FF Spectra camera in a junk shop with some film inside but not enough juice left in the batteries. I modified it for external power like this...open the camera up so it's ready to shoot. Undo the screw on each of the neckstrap mounts. Open the film bay door and undo the small screw just inside on the roof of the film bay. You'll then have to do a certain amount of judicious levering. I broke two small plastic tabs getting the camera apart, but they're not important. The top part of the body lifts off, and then you'll see a blue and a red wire inside leading from the battery terminals to the camera mechanism. What you do next is up to you. Initially I just cut the wires, filed a hole where the two halves of the camera body met and fed the wires outside. I put the camera back together, hooked up a 6 volt battery, and took the remaining photos in the film pack. I got more ambitious and fitted a small double pole-double throw slide switch and DC socket so I can select between an external battery pack and the film batteries. This involved drilling a hole in the camera body for the socket and cutting another hole for the switch, then soldering it all together with hookup wire. I bought a small plastic 4-AA battery pack and DC plug, connected it up and velcro-dotted the pack to the back of the camera. It's pretty slimline so doesn't interfere with how the camera hangs against your body and can be removed if the film batteries are OK. I realise your Spectra may be different to this one but hopefully the idea is transferable - they seem pretty simple once you get them open.

Cheers,

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