@Syed, I got 2 dB improvement off of sawing the bottom off of a stainless steel martini mixer I got from Goodwill. It tapers down to almost the diameter of the LNA. It’s a little wider than that steel can. I still need to buy a hose clamp to tighten it to my LNA. It does not stay on very well with electrical tape.
–Konrad, WA4OSH
Konrad, how long was the ss martini mixer shield? Does it extend to the back of the LNB while in place? I have tried aluminum “dryer duct”, but it does not seem to have very good shielding characteristics as compared to the steel can.
I took a martini shaker, threw away the top and cut the bottom off of the cup. I used electrical tape to hold it over the LNB. The improvement was about 2-3 dB.
After a couple of hours the wind and rain moved the cup towards one side. What I’m going to do is to make four lateral cuts so that the bottom of the cup can be clamped down with a hose clamp onto the LNB. I’m also looking for a plastic lid to keep the rain and weather out. So far, I’m using a clear plastic drink bottle bottom. I’m still working on refining it.
–Konrad, WA4OSH
@Konrad_Roeder Have you looked through the collection of Tupperware lids in your kitchen? Once and awhile you could get lucky with that…
Exactly! Thanks for the idea. I’m headed back to Goodwill to look at their collection of Tupperware lids.
–Konrad, WA4OSH
@Zoltan
I’m not sure that USB Ethernet Network adapters are supported.
DreamCatcher 3.02Q with Skylark 5.1 does not seem to report on Status when using TP-LINK USB 3.0 to Gigabit Ethernet Network Adapter instead of WiFi dongle. I am able to communicate to DC over PoE connection. I have not yet verified by running the board using power from the Ethernet cable, but using Wi-Fi dongle to connect to my Wi-Fi network.
–Konrad, WA4OSH
@Konrad_Roeder I had a pluggable USB ethernet adapter and mine seemed to register on the map then, this was v5.0 of Skylark though. Have not tested the same on 5.1 so you may have found something there.
I had the problem on Skylark V5.0, so I upgraded to V5.1 so that I could possibly fix it or read the error log. My WiFi connection got one IP and my USB Ethernet adapter got another one. I thought there may be some sort of problem with two “different” mac addresses and LAN IP addresses (resulting in a different source port) issue in the cloud. I also tried cancelling the Ethernet LAN IP address and using the WiFi LAN IP address for the USB Ethernet adapter. This was a dead-end.
As I pointed out earlier, I will try to further isolate the problem to find the source. I will run the unit using Wi-Fi, but powering it over Ethernet.
Another thing to do is to do a ping and tracert from my service to the cloud to see if it’s a routing or firewall issue. @Abhishek perhaps you can message me the IP and port.
–Konrad, WA4OSH
Is there anything with pointing the attenna that I can do to help over come this kinda results in the tuner status
That looks pretty good. a bitrate of over 11000 …
Even with my frame lock? Also great job with the outernet team making it behave on my phone
You have good Rssi levels, so improving the SNR is the key. Several of us have made cones to shield the LNB which improved the SNRs by about 3 dB. Maybe you could try that. Ken
My DC is now using WIFI to connect to the router and i’m using a cone made out of a martini mixer to improve my SNR. Here’s a screenshot of my Tuner Status.
–Konrad, WA4OSH
@Zoltan @Syed
When the DC is connected via WIFI dongle to the network, it reports on the Status. When I use the USB ethernet dongle, it does not. Is this a bug?
–Konrad, WA4OSH
Zoltan, You had reported that a TP-Link TL-UE300 ethernet adapter worked with Skylark. Did it report in too? Ken
More experience on “weather protecting” the front of the lnb feedhorn…
Last night we got a lot of ice and snow then more ice and snow.
The plastic cover of the lnb was encrusted with 2 to 3 inches of the combined ice layers and snow layers.
It was showing -14…5 db then I scraped of the coating and snr jumped up -7.5 db. So lesson learned that a greater then 6dB (around a power received loss 75% — if my math is close) if I don’t protect it from the snow/ice.
