I have been sitting on this project for several months,mostly because of other activities taking my time for over a year. Now, with more time on my hands, I am trying to give it a go. Linux and its variants are an unfamiliar language to me and overall as far as computers go I am about a three on a scale of ten. I have been a Ham Operator for about 55 years, and those skills are not as developed as much as I wish, either. But I am always interested in new technology. I think this Othernet project is utterly fascinating.
I spent all my free time the past two weeks reading everything I could on the forum, thank you to all who have posted so much of their knowledge.
Here is my situation: Dreamcatcher Model 3.02Q board, looks like a build date of 03/18. I Downloaded the Skylark 5.4 image and managed to get it unzipped and onto a 32 GB card (smallest I had available) and put a 64 GB card in the Data slot. Eight feet of RG-6 to the LNA/Antenna and a RPI 2.3 Amp Power source. I followed the excellent Users Guide of 10/29/18 by Ken Barbi and with a few retries, got lights to flash and the board to boot up.
From what I can see, it goes through all the boot sequence fine, the touch screen comes up and advises me of progress and in about 45 seconds or so it changes to the light blue home screen with four icons and information about it being in Access Port Mode, the IP address, what the Skylark URL is and the amount of free storage (27,3 free).
LED STATUS: #5-Busy: Flashes green about once per second. #6-Packet: Nothing. #7-USR 1: Blinking when booting, but then off. #8-USR2: Green/heartbeat. #9-PWR: White. #10-Status: Green. #11-AGP3: Red. The Wi-Fi Plug flashes green.
I get no response from the Touch Screen, either with a stylus or my finger.The menu selector bar does not move. And I cannot do the "Rreconfig/Reboot " as suggested on Page 4 of the user guide. After about 6 minutes, the screen turns off and will not come back on until the next power cycle/reboot. I think this is a problem !
I have no packet reception indication yet, I am using the bare antenna with a homemade bracket, the elevation is set with an inclonometer to what the SatFinder page advises for my location (Eugene, Oregon), but my aim is just through a window since the rain is not cooperating. I have been studying about the cones and have various metal, hardware cloth and foil tape too experiment with, but also a small 20x18 inch oval Dish with mount that fits the Maverick LNB perfectly.
I was able to easily find the WI-FI and log on to the board with my Laptop, (Windows 8.1), Using the admin logon I am able to check out all the menu items, and things “Look Good” to me and show about what I expect I would see without actually receiving any data, I.e. no News, no Files, No Messages, but the Weather globe can be controlled and the README.TXT file makes sense, the LNA reports back - OK.- I guess. Obviously, nothing on the tuner screen…yet?
I have checked and the Touch Screen appears to be well seated, the board runs cool . So something seems to be a problem there, Or?
I did clean and format the cards with “SD Card Formater” as suggested and the OS chip is a SanDisk Ultra 32, the Data Disk is a Samsung 64. I do give it a power-off rest time of about five minutes whenever I turn it off to change cards or reconnect things and I have given it over an hour of “On” time on several occasions to see if something in the initial boot-up takes a lot longer to install.
That’s where I sit for the time being, watching lights blink, Wondering what to do next and hoping someone has some ideas to try.
Also, when aiming, my assumption is to try to set the look elevation angle and start with the azimuth, then slowly sweep a few degrees, then slightly change the skew, repeat, make a slight elevation change, repeat, and keep trying until the packet light blinks or do I watch the Tuner App status screen?
In advance, thank you for help,This looks to be a pretty cool “fraternity” of some very smart people willing to invest their time and energy in a very interesting and worthwhile project. I am very happy to be a part of it and hope that someday, maybe a little something that I can contribute will be a part of the overall success.
Kenton K7BQ