I’m unable to get my old Dreamcatcher (DC) v3.02Q to achieve LOCK with the a new Bullseye LNB. I get an intermittent signal, but even with the Tuner App, can’t find a happy spot for LOCK. Has anyone else had this problem? @Syed what say you? Is the v3.02Q different enough from the DC v3.03 or v3.05 not to work on the new frequencies?
Reason behind this effort is my portable unit used the older DC v3.02Q and Maverick LNB. I’m now using the Bullseye in place of the old Maverick on a spare DC v3.03 I have. Below is result first time up with minimal adjusting - - Bullseye with DC V3.03 and NO cone or horn. (Adding a horn waveguide improves SNR by 4 dB with no effect on Rssi) Ken
your numbers are looking fine with the 3.03. I found out that i need to leave the unit running for a bit after making changes, the Lora chip seems to have some internal self-adjusting frequency tracking which needs to stabilize. Also a reboot of the board can help if you have intermittent on/off lock.
There weren’t any substantial differences between the various 3.xx versions of Dreamcatcher. It should work, but obviously it’s not. Are you getting any packets at all?
It performed poorly just like the DC v3.05 with a Maverick LNB - - that is, it would fluctuate in and out of Lock when I was close to being on frequency. I might receive a few good packets, but nothing significant. Tuning it with the Tuner App 1.12 never fixed the problem getting me better performance.
In the comparison tests, I used the same Bullseye permanently sited, and the same Skylark SD cards. I was operating bare LNB or with a horn wave guide at the LNB location on a 4 ft rf cable (not my FTA dish/500 ft run). Prior to the bandwidth reductions earlier in the month, the DC v3.02Q and Maverick worked fine. Strange, don’t you think?
I don’t think anyone else in the Forum is using the DC v3.02Q now. As I’ve mentioned, I reconfigured my portable terminal with a Bullseye and an old DC v3.03. Ken
Another thought here - - the receive signal level of the DC v3.02q (Rssi) was close to -90 dBm. This is near the lower threshold of DC performance.
Some of my collected statistics on the DC v3.02q Rssi levels on past Reception postings with the previous larger bandwidth signals were on the order of -80 dBm. Ken
If the board is good and the LNB is good then I’d look at what’s left. I’d check the actual voltage at the LNB’s end of the coax and wiggle the cable to check for cable problems. I’d put a coax splitter inline with the LNB cable and watch for voltage flux while the LNB is connected. And then with the splitter installed, I’d connect my HackRF (or equivalent) to check the signal sent to the board from the LNB. It will be about -10 dBm low because of the split but it’ll show signal condition. Just some ideas. Good luck.
