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COBRA COBRA Quickplugs Now Available!

cobrafiringsystems_ryan

cobrafiringsystems_ryan

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Jun 2019
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We are incredibly excited to formally debut our newest product line, Quickplugs!

Igniters
A quickplug is a small plug that comes pre-installed on your Talon Igniter Clips and MJG Initiators. This allows you to easily plug your igniter directly into the cue. Igniters with quickplugs installed are sold at the same price as our traditional igniters. When you purchase these, you are given the choice to purchase them with either quickplugs, or traditional wire end.
Conversion Kits
If you are interested in converting your current equipment to support quickplugs, we have you covered! All COBRA equipment is able to be converted to support quickplugs. We have laid out the different options you can select based on the equipment you currently own and how you plan to use it on our new quickplug landing page.
Firing Modules
If you are looking to purchase new equipment, all of our firing module packages that contain slats have been updated to include quickplug slats instead of mini slats. This means the price you see as the baseline for these products will be slightly different than it was before this launch. Nothing has increased in price, but the pricing has been reworked to include the quickplug slats as the included slat. We are also releasing 18M, 36M, and 72M modules with onboard quickplugs.

Updated
New!

18S & 36S Slats
If you already own and use COBRA slats, and are looking to add quickplugs to the mix, this can be done simply by purchasing an 18S or 36S quickplug slat and plugging them right into your existing equipment with DB25 or Centronics 50 connectors.

Pro-Adapt Plates
Additionally, we are releasing quickplug Pro-Adapt Plates. These will allow you to quickly convert your module to support quickplugs by removing the old Pro-Adapt Plate and attaching a new one.

6S Slats - Preorder
If you are looking to add smaller slats to your 18M module, no problem! In a few weeks we will be launching brand new 6S Slats! These slats have an RJ45 connector and will plug right in to any 18M Quickplug cue strip. These will be arriving on June 21st but are available to preorder now!
As always, if you have any questions or concerns, please reach out to us at help@cobrafiringsystems.com or 518-222-7410.
 
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I have been following this project for a while. My only question was answered by checking out the website: shunts; which come on the MJG initiators and I'm even more amazed that there was no price increase. Well done!
 
How did you address the problem of the plugs coming loose and falling out during a show that the beta testers encountered?
 
The Quick plug receptacle is a custom Cobra built piece. I believe they went through a few variations of it adjusting the size to get the optimal friction to hold the plug tight enough not to fall out during a show, but be easy to pull out after a show. As with many Cobra items, these have been in test/use for over a year before they were released.

They seem to fit well for me, but I've only had them on smaller consumer racks.

Chris
 
Thanks Chris, we shall see how well they hold after repeated use. In my experience the sun and plastic are not always compatible. I'm familiar with Cobra's testing protocols, but that has not prevented some major firmware failures in the past. I think some kind of locking arm to hold the clips in place would have been a better design.
 
I love the extra RJ45 connector for attaching slats to the unit. I am curious how much it will decrease the number of igniters (talon/ematch) it can shoot with the added resistance.
 
Most RJ45 Cat 5/6 cables are 24AWG, although it can vary. That's pretty comparable to the Cobra DB25 cables. The big difference is the RJ45 cables only have 2 wires to carry the ground vs 7 wires in a DB25. So total resistance is the resistance of the power to the ematch and back. The 7 wires gives less resistance than 2 wires. Less resistance/more power means more matches can be fired at once.

I did an Amp testing from a 72M (with side exit DB25 connectors) using a custom (homemade) DB25 to RJ45 connector with a 25ft CAT 5 cable to the RJ45 slats. I measured about 3.2/3.3 Amps on the slat. The same 72M using a 3ft 22AWG DB25 cable was reading about 7.3 Amps.

My intent was to use the RJ45 slats for my fronts with fairly short cables. I did a show recently where I used 7ft RJ45 cables with single matches for fronts and a 25 ft RJ45 cable to a Slice rack. I did test 50ft with 2 matches and it worked fine. I didn't test the limits, just enough to make me comfortable for my use.

I haven't taken the time to do the math (Ohms law) to determine the exact thresholds. There's a website Igniter Calculator that will calculate it, but I don't know if it's assuming DB25 cables with 7 ground wires or 1 ground wire. I think Cobras chart is a little on the conservative side (which is probably the safe approach). Even if you do the math/chart, testing more matches at a longer distance makes me feel comfortable as there are lots of variables in wire/matches/connectors/etc.

Chris
 
Thanks for the reply Chris.
I generally wouldn't use more than 1 or 2 per cue myself just curious how much it would affect things. I guess your right it would vary entirely on the cables.
This will be my first year using a cobra but something I am going to have to look into going forward.
 
I'm converting one module and will try it out on the Fourth... Rather than try it cold with show product, I'll add in some consumer product, Super Stunt and/ or Detonator, under the 1.3 shells, with the converted mod. If there's any failure it won't affect the show. I don't expect Cobra to fail...
 
I just tried it. Oh my gosh. How fast this is! It's a game changer, truly. If I converted all my modules this would save me 2-1/2 hours of set up time on July 4. If you only have a few modules you should absolutely do this! Well, assuming it's stable. MJG said they will also provide regular ematch with the connectors as well as Firewire. But for their Jtek ematch they will add $0.09 per match; and you can get any custom length you want. It blew me away to make these connections so fast...
 
They have a video up at
that introduces them and has a time-lapse comparison of quick plugs vs standard plugs. Assuming you mainly do 1 initiator per cue, they seem like a great way to save time/effort. (Given the heat we're already seeing in Texas, that a big plus.)

I believe the Cobra Quickplug initiators/talons have a bit of glue added on top of the quick plug connectors. If you buy them from anyone else or make them, they might not have that added step. I think it's just an added measure to prevent the wires from coming out of the Quickplug connector. I don't know if this is something Cobra adds or MJG does? (I should say, the Cobra Quickplugs initiator I have are from the beta test, so it's possible they've changed the process to not need it.)

BTW, if you notice that video is over a year old. It just shows how much testing they put into these things.

Chris
 
Chris,

MJG installs the plugs, Cobra supplies them. Nothing has changed since the betas. They had a boatload made a few years ago, surprised it took this long to get them in the market.

pyroandy can tell you what crews can do to a pyromagic rail so I can only imagine how these things will fair with regular use.

Doc these are not new, pyromaster and MJG had these plugs for years. They never really caught on except in niche markets. Display companies don't want to spend an extra .10 a match.
 
Ok I converted 5 modules. This will be a lot easier for helpers who don’t do this all the time. You will not have to teach them how to strip exactly the right amount of wire, bend the wire in half at exactly the right radius so that it will fit in the speaker connector, and prevent extra bare wire from shorting out adjacent cues. However, the numbers on the face plate do not exactly line up with the connectors since all six of them take up less space than the six speaker type connectors. I think I can come up with a homemade label to make this more clear. You can take some used Quickplug matches, cut them off and wire up some test LEDS. Since there are no speaker terminals to plug the bare LED wire into. Converting the 9volt units is a snap taking 14 minutes. But the rechargeable LiPo units have a circuit board that you have to maneuver around to switch out the cue strips. It’s possible that board just pops loose to get it out of the way, but I didn’t try that. The Quickplug cue strips are secured by a bolt and nut, not screws in to plastic. So I added a drop of LocTite to them. This way you don’t have to over tighten them which squishes out the tiny o-ring; which causes early failure. You have to re-use your current o-rings or fit new ones, since none are provided. Or perhaps they are not needed. I assume the old gaskets are meant to be fitted as well, which I did. Again, none are provided. It’s an easy project and I look forward to trying this rig out!
 
cduesman said:
As with many Cobra items, these have been in test/use for over a year before they were released.

Chris
Click to expand...
pyro79 said:
I'm familiar with Cobra's testing protocols, but that has not prevented some major firmware failures in the past.
Click to expand...

Yeah, all this buzz about quickplugs, and I still can't pause my audio box without it distorting the audio for a full 30s afterwards, nor can I lock out cue groups via control panel, nor can I load scripts or play audio via the control panel, nor are support documents loaded offline onto the control panel, nor can I see any diagnostics after a show, nor can I use a WAV file with the Audio Box, etc etc etc.

I get it, cool new toy, but I'd kinda prefer some of the features that have been 'coming soon' for the last 2-3 years.
 
Every aspect of Cobra may not be perfect, but Quickplugs is a nice time saver, especially in the Texas heat. Or for that matter on an icy day! I don't know if Control Panel has it, but being able to exclude cues by caliber would be handy.
 
mguerramd said:
Every aspect of Cobra may not be perfect, but Quickplugs is a nice time saver, especially in the Texas heat. Or for that matter on an icy day! I don't know if Control Panel has it, but being able to exclude cues by caliber would be handy.
Click to expand...


Glad to see your fear of Firewire initiators seems to have vanished. 🤔
 
I tried to make it very clear before that IF someone happened to have some of that defective batch, not to use it. I never implied that Firewire in general is untrustworthy. I have 90 Quickplug Firewires and a few hundred regular ematches for Thursday's show and I expect that Firewire to go...
 
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