Motor problem - it went mental!

[tjb305]

Hello,

Satellite went a little mental this evening. We suddenly lost signal. I thought that maybe the satellite had moved so tried moving the dish to another satellite to check. It would move to the right satellite, get a signal but then move in the opposite direction. As far as I could tell the dish would have hit the wall unless I had turned the box off. I turned the receiver back on, tried to move back to the satellite i was watching and it happened again. I also tried turning the motor settings off and on and that did not seem to work.

I turned it off again and it is now behaving itself. I've turned the motor settings off for now until I can figure out what happened.

Any ideas?

Cheers

[Robbo]

A dodgy connection perhaps? or rain has got into the connectors.

[tjb305]

Thanks for the quick response.

Would rain do that? I had a feeling it was the box at fault rather than the motor?

I have rubber covers on the f connectors but no tape.

[Robbo]

Rain could do that, I would have thought. The commands to the motor are sent by modulating a 22kHz carrier. If that got interupted at all, and since there is no feedback with DiSEqC1.2, the motor could get corrupt data.

Are you using USALS or DiSEqC1.2. With USALS, the receiver has to send a Goto X command to the receiver. Whereas with DiSEqC, the positions are stored in the motor, and the receiver just tells it which one to pick.

Must admit, I have never had such a problem, so I'm just gusssing really.

Maybe a motor reset might help, once you have checked the connections. Might also be worth setting up the harware limits so that it doesn't bash the wall.

[tjb305]

I will check the cable connections and tape them up to be sure. I use USALS so maybe the command got messed up and the motor went slightly mad.

Cheers for the advice.

[Robbo]

Yes, I vaguely remember reading in the manual that you should not disconnect the cable while the motor was running (or was it turn it off?), either way could get it all confuddled. Water, or a dodgy connection would have the same effect.

[pontiend]

Originally Posted by robbo71

Yes, I vaguely remember reading in the manual that you should not disconnect the cable while the motor was running (or was it turn it off?), either way could get it all confuddled. Water, or a dodgy connection would have the same effect.

I think that in the stabb manual it says that if you switch the receiver off too often while the motor is running.The motor can get confused.A bit like me really.

[tjb305]

Seems to behaving itself at the mo. I hope it doesn't start to have as many mood swings as my other half.