HOW TO: Pair the RED Komodo Link Adaptor with the RED Hydrogen One Phone
The RED Hydrogen was a unique approach for RED and one that offered a lot of promise. That was until the company decided to change direction and canceled the RED Hydrogen One indefinitely with no further development – including the previously promised add-ons. For the early RED Hydrogen One adopters this was likely annoying and, after cancelling the RED Hydrogen One they offered a $1000 discount to RED Hydrogen One owners as a discount towards their new and very sought after micro cinematic camera the RED Komodo. As of right now, if you’re an existing Hydrogen owner you can still get the $1000 discount until some time in December 2020.
Weirdly, however, the release of the Komodo also rejuvenated people’s interest in the RED Hydrogen One phone – a discontinued but highly sought after device. Currently, you can get a brand new, unboxed Hydrogen One on ebay for $250-300, a sixth of it’s original cost and trust us, it packs a punch for that price point – so much so we just bought a second one. The RED Hydrogen One comes into its own as a set control and monitoring device. It can be used as a control for a plethora of other apps while also serving as a simple yet impressive monitoring solution for the RED Komodo. When you also consider it can comfortably capture some amazing footage from both of it’s cameras you realize you’re on to a winner. We use our RED Hydrogen One to control our edelkrone slider, our Astera tubes and when needed it is mounted on our RED Komodo Stormtrooper to be used as a monitor. Our team is also using it to grab BTS photos and footage due to the quality of the cameras.
While we could go on a much longer rant about how awesome the RED Hydrogen One is the intent of this thread is to help explain how to configure the RED Komodo, the RED Komodo Link Adaptor and the RED Hydrogen One phone to all work together because, when you unbox the RED Komodo link adaptor there are literally no instructions. You would assume then that this device is simply plug and play. This is not the case!
What is the RED Komodo Link Adaptor?
It’s essentially a hard wire from the Komodo to the RED Control app to let you achieve near zero latency as a monitoring tool. You do not need to own the RED Komodo Link Adaptor to have the RED Komodo work with the Red Control app but some folks have complained about latency and frame drops using wifi so, if like us you need to monitor every frame precisely and with as little latency as possible you’re likely going to want the RED Komodo Link Adaptor.
After unboxing the RED Komodo Link Adaptor the first question is “which way do you install it?” Out of the box it’s not clear. Below is a RED official image that shows which way you need to mount the RED Komodo Link Adaptor – note the markings to help you. They also decided not to include an Alan key so be sure you have an Alan key multi tool at your disposal.
So, the RED Komodo Link Adaptor is installed, now what? Well start by plugging the USB-C cable into the RED Komodo Link Adaptor and also into the RED Hydrogen ONE phone. This is where I assumed the RED Komodo Link Adaptor would just work. How wrong I was!
Upon opening the RED Control App on the Hydrogen One there was no connection between the RED Komodo and the RED Hydrogen One. At this point I took to Google and, believe it or not there was zero information on how to get the RED Komodo Link Adaptor to work. No Google results, no user guide, nothing. Next I took to Youtube. Still nothing. As a last resort I searched the various RED Komodo Facebook groups I’m a member of to see who else was using this with a RED Hydrogen One and how they had achieved that. One comment on one of the threads linked to a RED video that I needed to go 40 minutes into to get the information I needed to make this work and that essentially helped me make a working connection between the RED Komodo and the RED Komodo Link Adaptor.
This blog post is intended as a summary of the information we learned and is intended as an instruction manual for the people that just bought the RED Komodo link adaptor and have no idea how to get it to work with their Android device.
We hope this guide helps many folks and serves the internet as a user guide to the RED Komodo Link Adaptor that should probably have been included with the product in the first place! We have no idea how easy or hard this is on iPhone and this guide is specifically aimed at RED Hydrogen One / Android users.
HOW TO INSTALL THE RED Komodo LINK ADAPTOR
- Screw in the RED Komodo Link Adaptor. The correct Alan key is not included with the product so be sure you have an Alan key multi-tool available
- Plug a USB-C cable into the RED Komodo Link Adaptor and the other side of that cable into the RED Hydrogen One
- Mount the RED Hydrogen one to the Komodo
- Power Up the RED Komodo and open the RED Control app on your Hydrogen One
- On the RED Komodo, click MENU > COMMUNICATION underneath which you will see a new menu item KOMODO Link Adaptor
- Click the KOMODO Link Adaptor menu item and you’ll likely notice that next to the IP address option it just says N/A and there are no further options for you to press
- On your RED Hydrogen One go to SETTINGS > NETWORK & INTERNET > HOTSPOT & TETHERING
- You’ll notice that the USB Tethering is no longer grayed out as it usually is
- Turn on USB Tethering – if like mine you get a network error, press it a second time for it to actually work and turn on
- On the Komodo you will see an actual IP address where N/A was previously e.g. 192.168.42.65
- Open the RED Control app – at this point it still might not show the Komodo as available to connect to – others have seen success and are connected at this juncture. If you’re still not connected follow the next few steps 🙂
- Within the RED Control app on your RED Hydrogen ONE click MANUAL IP and enter the IP address that is listed on your RED Komodo e.g. 192.168.42.65
- Once you enter the manual IP address you should see your Komodo appear in the list with [LINK] next to it, showing that you’re indeed connected via the link adaptor
- Click the Komodo icon with [LINK] and you’re good to go! You should now have all the Komodo control you ever wanted on the RED Hydrogen One that you can also use as a killer monitor!
