New SG2100 motor problem?

[Fizbi]

Power company was out at my house today installing a new power box on the street. When I got home, all the digital clocks were blinking verifying a loss of power. I powered up the big screen and had the FTA channel I was last at and on the big screen. When I hit the remote to slew to another SAT, everything went black, no signal.

MicroHD data was all there. I did a factory reset and reloaded my data, all there, but the dish does not move. I peeked out the window and the dish was layed over like it was dead. Driven into the the west stop with an orange light - ON. Motor reset does not seem to help, but light goes back to green.

I tried nudging the dish with a step command from the MicroHD. All motor does is step east ONE, then step back west ONE. If I select another SAT position, it drives hard to east or west and limit out. If I manually drive it with the motor push button, I can drive it to any SAT position and get a signal, like 125W and get my channels.

I set the motor config to "none" to keep it parked at 125W until I can get my brains together. I calmly told myself not to go out and work on this all night and keep the neighborhood up wondering why I've lit up the side of my house working on a dish problem. I THINK I can hold out until the weekend...

The question now is, is it a motor failure, or receiver failure? I'll drag out my CS5000 tomorrow and see if I get the same results.

Any suggestions? I've already browsed old threads on the SG2100. Right now, I'm watching Montana PBS with my MicroHD, which I just received a few days ago and it has the latest firmware. ...Now the hobby gets more interesting...

 

[SatelliteAV]

Is the motor positioned using USALS or DiSEqC 1.2?

If USALS, did you reenter your longitude and longitude after reloading the .udf?

Was a motor reset performed with the motor not at position zero?

 

[Fizbi]

All SAT positions set for DiSEqC 1.2, except for 125W currently set to "none". Long/Lat was set to my location a couple days ago when experimenting with USALS, but I stopped using USALS alltogether. Motor reset was performed at near zero as I could get it in the dark.

Is it possible all the SAT positions in the motor memory were zeroed out, or worse, set out of range, during the power outage?

 

[SatelliteAV]

DiSEqC 1.2 position table is stored in the motor. If the microHD has issued a saved position number and the motor is not traveling to the previously saved position, it is possible that the motor has lost its reference position or returned to a factory stored default table. DiSEqC 1.2 motor positioning is not stored in a receiver.

Probably best to return the motor to the zero position and perform a hardware reset on the motor. I would strongly urge you to use your system primarily in the USALS mode and use DiSEqC 1.2 only for the occasional satellite that needs a slight bump to optimize.

Sometimes motor logic gets scrambled, cleared or lost with power loss or component failure.

 

[Fizbi]

Thanks. I'll give that a try when I get home tonight. I've decided to disconnect the receiver and a few other electronic devices until the power company gets done with the street upgrades.

I'll try sticking with USALS and see if my positioning errors stabilize.

 

[Fizbi]

SAT AV, Thanks for your help. I'm back to watching the sky.

The reset on the motor did the trick. In addition, I set all my SAT motor drives to USALS.
Switching from DiSEqC 1.2 to USALS brings back the original problem I had when I first started this hobby, and that was getting a less than perfect dish alignment. DiSEqC 1.2 allowed me to tweak out the error of not being exactly on true south.

I've always had a good arc, just not exactly perfect. So, this time I tried a trick I just read about today and low and behold, it works! What I've noticed in the past is that I've always had to nudge the motor about 6 to 10 steps towards the west. My Longitude is 106.588 W, so when I entered that into my local USALS location, I was always a tad off. This time, I tried entering the wrong value of 105.30W (my local longitude minus the error) and WA-LA! the positioning error goes away, and now all my birds are zeroed in.

The question now is, will the values stick? Will the drift come back? Seems to be a common problem for some motor owners. I don't really care now as I have a better way to correct the error.

I will now follow these steps to put sanity back into my motor:

• Use GOTO-X to drive motor to "reference". I noticed it puts the motor at zero position (0 degrees) on the scale.
• Perform the motor hardware reset using a paperclip.
• Cycle the power on the motor and MicroHD (pull the plug and let it sit for a few minutes).
• Fire it back up.
• Set all birds for USALS.
• Enter my Longitude (+/- the physical error, about 1.23 degrees).
• Make a bag of popcorn and go back to watching my favorite shows.

It seems my motor data was corrupted after all. Maybe putting the MicroHD on a surge protector will help out. Can't hurt.
After reading through several threads and similar problems on other forums, I believe there is insufficient documentation on motor drives to help solve some of these motor drift problems. Then again, maybe it's just me. Always something to learn in this hobby.

 

[SatelliteAV]

USALS is a calculation performed by the receiver to drive a motor x.xx degrees east or west of the hardware defined center position. If you are having to modify your install location's Longitude value in the USALS calculation in order to land the dish in the correct position for all satellites, either the hardware is defective/damaged or the install was not performed correctly. The motor's "0" position should not drift unless the position is manually changed or the flash memory is corrupted.

The microHD is not capable of producing a voltage surge for the DC output. The external power supply a AC to DC convertor with voltage protection and the microHD has internal DC voltage regulation. While it is always suggested that all electronics are power filtered through a Surge Protector, a power surge was likely not the cause of the motor memory failure. More likely that the power was intermittently interrupted and the motor lost power during a start-up cycle.

A UPS device (with a high joule response surge protection) would be much more useful in avoiding brownouts and voltage On/Off pulses that are typically the cause of electronic device failure.

 

[Cham]

As Brian says, a good UPS for your electronic equipment is a good investment. I live on the end of a power line in a distant corner of our local power grid. Without the UPSs on the computer and electronic equipment we would always be having trouble. Power line voltage is all over the place, and can take an hour or two to get back after a thunderstorm goes through the area and the power company resets the breakers.
I just wish we could get a better deal on the replacment batteries for the UPSs! Often it's cheaper to replace the whole UPS rather than just change the battery. That just bothers me!

The MicroHD uses 12vdc 2A for it's supply. Surplus stores often sell gel-cell batteries fairly cheap (just not ones that fit my UPSs!). As long as the power supply open circuit voltage stays below 13.5V, you could use it to keep your battery charged and power the microHD... It's a switching supply so it shouldn't require a diode to stop the drain from the power supply when the power goes out. When in standby mode the Micro would likely stay powered for a day or more without the AC mains. (It would of course discharge the battery fairly quickly if the micro was turned on)
The battery should be kept away from the electronic equipment, and always use a fuse between battery and connected devices.

 

[Magic Static]

I agree with SatAV on the problem being a lack of power when the motor starts, the counter misses the first few clicks and throws off GoTo count. I experienced this situation constantly with almost every motor I've used. The fix for me was to mod the SG2100. I isolated the motor relays and provided an external power source to run the motor. The brain of the motor still uses the coax power and controls the relays. This also allows to run full voltage on both polarities so the motor is a lot faster.

 

[KE4EST]

Nice Power Point Magic!

 

[Fizbi]

USALS is a calculation performed by the receiver to drive a motor x.xx degrees east or west of the hardware defined center position. If you are having to modify your install location's Longitude value in the USALS calculation in order to land the dish in the correct position for all satellites, either the hardware is defective/damaged or the install was not performed correctly. The motor's "0" position should not drift unless the position is manually changed or the flash memory is corrupted...

I would say the system is now operating correctly as I'm receiving all the birds in my visible arc. The fact that I'm off a hair, and that entering an adjusted longitude gets me what I want, just tells me that if I was to take a crowbar to my dish mount and nudge the hardware the amount equal to the offset, would probably allow me to put the correct longitude in for my location. It would be like "slipping the dial" to fix a slight error. Not perfect, but close enough for goverment work.

As for the power, UPS would be nice on the whole house to protect everything, but not practical at this point. Maybe I'll get off the grid someday and it won't be an issue anymore. Only my computer is protected by UPS.

 

[cyberham]

I would say the system is now operating correctly as I'm receiving all the birds in my visible arc. The fact that I'm off a hair, and that entering an adjusted longitude gets me what I want, just tells me that if I was to take a crowbar to my dish mount and nudge the hardware the amount equal to the offset, would probably allow me to put the correct longitude in for my location. It would be like "slipping the dial" to fix a slight error. Not perfect, but close enough for goverment work.

I agree. For me to precisely set the motor physically at 0 reference is easy when installing a dish new. But after the fact, I would need to remove the dish reflector so I can view the scale straight on. With reflector in place, a very sideways view is only possible of the motor scale. Removing the reflector is way too much work so cheating on the longitude value makes more sense.

 

[SatelliteAV]

Borrow the wife or GF compact case mirror. No need to remove the reflector to view the tube pointer.

 

[cyberham]

How do you know I don't carry my own mirror? Ok, ok, now I have to go out into the wind so I can be a little scientist and do it correctly. Good idea.

Added: Using a mirror, I was able to read the motor reference scale accurately and I now have adjusted things so my configured longitude is set precisely using two decimal places. Even with the physical sighting using the mirror, I still needed to bump the motor manually one or two bumps, resetting it afterwards, in order to be able to configure the longitude to this exactness. USALS works if you set it up right.

 

[Tron]

If you don't have a mirror handy, the blade from a pocket knife works well in this situation. That's what I use to see my motor scale.

 

[cyberham]

Does this reflect that weapons are more common in society than items of vanity? We now return you...

 

[Magic Static]

....McGyver

 

[turbosat]

Never had a knife that clean!

 

[Tron]

The MacGyver reference is actually correct, as I use a Swiss Army knife for this purpose. Quite reflective and compact. The MacGyver theme plays in my head the whole time ...