BATC Forum

Hi,

We have a problem on the headless Portsdown 20 used on GB3CT. Every couple of days, the video stops working and users are reporting CT has lock but no video. I have tested the video input to the TX when in fault condition and the video input to the Easycap is present. I have since tried swapping the USB ports that the Easycap is plugged into and also tried it on the USB hub which has the Lime SDR connected, thinking it could be a power supply issue (the USB powered hub has its own supply) to no avail. I have since tried swapping the Easycap dongle from the streamer PI with CT but CT still goes off after a couple of days and the streamer works perfectly, so doesn't look look like a faulty dongle.
Rebooting the TX solves the problem for a couple of days after which it will return.
I have tried reinstalling the Portsdown software, but this hasn't made any difference either.
Does anyone have any idea as to what could be causing it because I'm out of ideas?

Thanks,

Jason G7KPM

Hi Jason

Is the Portsdown rebooting at 3 am and 3 pm every day (as it should do)? If so, does it recover on reboot?

Have you made any hardware changes that might have caused an earth loop on the video ground connection through the USB?

Dave, G8GKQ

HI Dave,

Thanks for the reply.

I'll look into the earth loop possibility, something I never considered so thanks for the suggestion.

I don't think it is rebooting twice daily because when the video goes off, it stays off until it is rebooted which I do manually from the menu via Kitty.
9 times out of 10 it comes back, occaisionally it needs a physical power cycle. Where are the settings to enable this?

Thanks again for your help,

73s

Jason G7KPM

Hi Jason

The 12-hourly reboot should be automatically set up when you select TX_Boot or Keyed_TX_Boot from the console menu (System Setup, Autostart on the ssh menu).

You can check that it is enabled by looking by running the command the last 3 lines should say If it is not enabled, try selecting autostart to the Prompt and then back to TX_Boot and check again.

73

Dave

Thanks Dave.

I checked and the last 3 lines were missing, so did you you suggested and they are now there.

I'll see how it goes, fingers crossed.

Thanks again for your help.

Regrards,

Jason