Can only obtain a code lock on linux desktop setup, nothing more

I just purchased a patch antenna, lna, and an rtl-sdr dongle from you guys but have had zero luck getting this working.

After very carefully aiming it and running it over a 24 hour span of time I never received more than a code lock. I have attempted to run this through both the VM setup and directly on my computer. Here are two screenshots of the system in the hopes it is useful in identifying what my problem may be:

And here is another image (I’m a new user so I can only have one image per post…

I had the same problems this afternoon, but other users are getting packets. Please hang tight. I need to discuss this with the team tomorrow.

Would you mind trying the non-VM way for Linux:

Outernet L-band on Linux desktop

You should definitely be getting packets with an SNR that high.

Thanks for your quick response. The images above are from running the demod/decoder directly on my desktop. I’m running Linux Mint.

I’m in Columbia, MD so I’m not too far from the gentleman in Annapolis, MD who is getting packets currently. I have a clear view of the sky.

Oh, I noticed an issue with the demod script… it is setting an rc filter to 0.2… but this is an invalid value… I think that should have been defined as 20 in the common var. It seems it doesn’t make a difference however as it is interpreted as 0, but the default is 20… so in the end it makes no difference.

I walked by and noticed the SNR gets better at night (not too surprising)

Could you try OuternetInABox, from here:

https://archive.outernet.is/images/OuternetInABox

and report back? Please make sure you follow the instructions in the Readme.

It will only work if your machine has hardware virtualization enabled.

This shows drastically different SNR compared to what virtualbox and directly run instances show (which are now 6-8dB). Hardware visualization is enabled and I am confident it is being used (at least the kvm kernel drivers are loaded and I did not see any messages suggesting fallback)
This image demonstrates what I see in qemu. If I quit it and flip back to a direct run instance the SNR returns to 6-8dB)

Please configure your beam. Look in /tmp/vm/Outernet/Satellites.Available

You are tuned to the EURAF beam which is default in OuternetInABox. If you are in the US, copy the AMERICAS.txt file from /tmp/vm/Outernet/Satellites.Available to /tmp/vm/Outernet/Satellites.Selected

Good catch. The file to use is for Americas. After restarting, you should see a frequency of 1539.873 MHz.

The readme

https://archive.outernet.is/images/OuternetInABox/Linux/Readme_Linux.sh

has been updated. Sorry about that!

@test The problem was with the build. Can you try the latest. There is another thread from today that confirms the most recent version of OuternetinaBox.

CHIP rxOS
Pi3 rxOS
Outernet in a Box

Ah, I should have caught the frequency of this qemu build.

I have updated and let it run but my signal is still very low tonight. (~1-3db). sdr100 reports “Frame Lock Achieved” and “Packet written to socket”, but cache/downloads remains empty and there are no messages in the ondd log after running for an hour

outernet starting Wed Sep 14 02:45:29 UTC 2016
02:45:29.451 [main] Unable to load config: /etc/ondd.conf (null)
02:45:29.452 [main] v2.2.0
outernet starting Wed Sep 14 02:46:32 UTC 2016

I will let it run overnight and see what happens.

After running this overnight I have received multiple files. It seems signal for this area drops in the evenings and is best in the mornings. Despite this 6-8dB SNR, I still observe that this seems to sit in CODE LOCK or CONST LOCK states more than FRAME lock

I am receiving info however… this is what has been seen sofar:

/tmp/vm/Outernet $ tree
.
├── cache
│   └── zindex
├── downloads
│   ├── 349500323655719731 - Elon Musk SpaceX Blast a 'Most Difficult, Complex Failure'.pdf
│   ├── 349511189655240738 - Karnataka closed for a day after Supreme Court's judgement for Kaveri water - Wikinews, the free news source.compressed.pdf
│   ├── 349523533655926489 - Clinton Health, Trump Reaction Consume.compressed.pdf
│   ├── 349558048432538370 - kanjan.jpg
│   ├── 349611663655236993 - Yellow Fever Under Control in Angola.pdf
│   ├── 349612507820981570 - bella1.jpg
│   └── Wikipedia
│       ├── Aly_Raisman.html.gz
│       ├── AMGTV.html.gz
│       ├── Deaths_in_2016.html.gz
│       ├── Gene_Wilder.html.gz
│       ├── Katie_Ledecky.html.gz
│       ├── Killing_of_Harambe.html.gz
│       ├── List_of_Olympic_Games_host_cities.html.gz
│       ├── List_of_Steven_Universe_episodes.html.gz
│       ├── Margot_Robbie.html.gz
│       ├── Okto.html.gz
│       ├── Proyecto_40.html.gz
│       ├── P._V._Sindhu.html.gz
│       ├── Rayleigh_length.html.gz
│       ├── Rustom_(film).html.gz
│       ├── Simone_Biles.html.gz
│       ├── Stranger_Things_(TV_series).html.gz
│       └── SummerSlam_(2016).html.gz
├── outernet.log
├── Satellites.Available
│   ├── AMERICAS.txt
│   ├── APAC.txt
│   ├── EURAF.txt
│   └── Readme.txt
└── Satellites.Selected
    └── AMERICAS.txt

5 directories, 30 files

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

@Abhishek This doesn’t make sense. A high SNR should immediately lock. Is it possible that the descrambler setting is changing?

no, not on OuternetInABox.

I can see you are missing about 23% packets. Mainly I can think of interference.

The software is designed to handle quite a bit of packet loss, though at your signal level, you should not be seeing any. Is there a pattern you notice regarding time-of-day vs frame lk status etc?

It is challenging for me to identify patterns with the current diagnostic capabilities. Is it possible to have sdr100 write statistics data to a log over extended periods of time?