Hello,
after my vacation I no longer have any reception.
3x DVB-S Budget cards vdr (1.4.7/1.4.5) - The Video Disk Recorder xineliboutput (1.0.0rc2) - X11/xine-lib output plugin vompserver (0.2.6) - VDR on MVP plugin by Chris Tallon femon (1.1.1) - DVB Signal Information Monitor (OSD) streamdev-server (0.3.3-pre3-geni) - VDR Streaming Server
The setup has been running for quite some time, after receiving a new dish and some new cables. Since then I have had a couple of month of very good reception. Now, after two weeks of vacation it is no longer functioning. Visiting the logs it seems the errors started around 20:03h, June 25th.
/var/log/messages:
Jun 25 20:03:22 vdr vdr: [11512] frontend 1 lost lock on channel 7, tp 112544
After that; I see very sporadic
Jun 26 16:06:14 vdr vdr: [11512] frontend 1 regained lock on channel 7, tp 112544
femon reports
vdr:~# femon -a 0 using '/dev/dvb/adapter0/frontend0' FE: Samsung S5H1420 DVB-S (SAT) status 00 | signal b6b6 | snr bfce | ber 00000000 | unc 00000000 | status 00 | signal b5b5 | snr bfce | ber 00000000 | unc 00000000 |
vdr:~# femon -a 1 using '/dev/dvb/adapter1/frontend0' FE: Samsung S5H1420 DVB-S (SAT) status 00 | signal b0b0 | snr bfca | ber 00000000 | unc 00000000 | status 00 | signal b0b0 | snr bfca | ber 00000000 | unc 00000000 |
vdr:~# femon -a 2 using '/dev/dvb/adapter2/frontend0' FE: Samsung S5H1420 DVB-S (SAT) status 00 | signal b0b0 | snr bfc4 | ber 00000000 | unc 00000000 | status 00 | signal b0b0 | snr bfc4 | ber 00000000 | unc 00000000 |
2 of the three cards are connected to a multiswitch, the third one is directly connected to an LNB.
szap ARD reports vdr:~# szap ARD reading channels from file '/root/.szap/channels.conf' zapping to 1 'ARD': sat 0, frequency = 11837 MHz H, symbolrate 27500000, vpid = 0x0065, apid = 0x0066 using '/dev/dvb/adapter0/frontend0' and '/dev/dvb/adapter0/demux0' status 00 | signal b5b5 | snr fffe | ber 00000000 | unc 00000000 | status 00 | signal b6b6 | snr fffe | ber 00000000 | unc 00000000 | status 00 | signal b5b5 | snr fffe | ber 00000000 | unc 00000000 |
showing no lock.
Any and help in finding the problem is greatly appreciated.
En/na Peer Oliver Schmidt ha escrit:
Hello,
after my vacation I no longer have any reception.
[...]
Just a wild guess, but if you usually leave your vdr pc switched on, leaving it off for a while could make it not work right when turned back on (usually capacitors are to blame). Maybe a capacitor in the power supply or the mainboard is faulty and it doesn't give enough juice to your cards to supply the lnbs. I repeat that's just a guess, so it may be totally unrelated to your actual problem.
Bye
Hello Luca,
thanks for the hint. The system was running the whole time ...
Just to make sure there no electronic gremlins I turned the whole system off today to see if it would fix the symptoms, but it didn't.
Any other idea(s)
Hi!
Any other idea(s)
Well, since you were on vacation and don't know if something happend to it, I'd check the dish-setup and the lnb. Perhaps you have an other (analogous) receiver at hand to test the reception. Since I have seen our dish (1/2 year old) getting tilted in a storm, I would not rule out movement of the dish due to screws getting loose - even when done by professionals.
Regards,
Thorsten
Thorsten Heck wrote:
Well, the culprit where the LNBs. They got toasted by the thunderstorm... At least, my electrician says so. Everything is back to working conditions.
Thanks to everyone, for your assistance and ideas.
On 7/5/07, Luca Olivetti luca@ventoso.org wrote:
Where did you hear this? 100% incorrect. Anyways, the first thing I'd check is whether or not wind/storm/etc has moved the dish at all, or if something is blocking the signal (maybe a tree grew in the way or so). There's a ton of things that could be wrong so just start with the easiest and work your way forward.
I had the same problem and it was because a vine grew onto my dish and was messing the signal. Ripped the vine down and everything magically was perfect again. :)
En/na VDR User ha escrit:
It actually happened to me, twice: an old pace mss1000, unplugged while on holiday, didn't turn on when I came back, I had to recap the power supply. One year later the same happened to the tv (this time it was just one capacitor in the power supply). Oh, and bad capacitors is a known a plague in many motherboards (yes, I have one that failed due to bad capacitors, you can see those for the leaked electrolyte or the bulged top, and even my current vdr machine needed a replacement capacitor).
Bye.
On 7/5/07, Luca Olivetti luca@ventoso.org wrote:
Yeah, I know how to tell if a capacitor is bad, went to college for electronic engineering. In all my years of working with electronics I have never seen a capacitor blow because a device was left on for a long period of time and then turned off. I'd recommend buying better equipment if you're having a problem with (cheap) parts failing. Although there's really only a small handful of component manufacturers that are generally used anyways..
En/na VDR User ha escrit:
Yes, those were two unrelated problem, and, no, a capacitor won't blow, but as it degrades (due to excessive heat, bad quality or simply a borderline design), it will go on working while the equipment is switched on, but if you turn it off it won't work when you switch it back on.
I'd recommend buying better equipment if you're having a problem with (cheap) parts failing.
Well, usually you don't have a choice on the components used, only on the final product, and the problem with bad capacitors in motherboards is spread among many top tier vendors, so it's not a problem of cheap components. Besides, there are no-name capacitors sold as brand name ones. And even expensive products eventually fail.
Bye
Peer, glad you got to the root of the problem. Fried lnb's should be a pretty cheap replacement. :)
Luca, I was referring to doing some homework on the mainboards before you buy. Read reviews, has the product held it's market value well?, are you seeing a lot of them for sale used. All these things point to whether it's a jewel or junk. And of course stay away from mainboard manufacturers who have a known history of putting out subpar products.
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Luca Olivetti -
Peer Oliver Schmidt -
Thorsten Heck -
VDR User