F Plug A input not working?

[G1BVI]

When I built my Mini Tiouner some time ago I had a shortage of PCB jumpers and so only ever enabled the bottom F Plug B.
Today I linked the other so that A1 and A2 are linked.
This puts the supply on pins 1 and 2 of the tuner.

if however I measure the voltage on the top F type the supply is not there.
I shorted pins 1 and 2 to ensure both pins were really getting a feed but still nothing on the top F socket.

My next option is going to have to get a bias Tee and feed the LNB with an external supply to test the port.
Has anyone else experienced this?

Is there any way of forcing Mini Tiouner software to default to F Plug A
Also in the Mini Tiouner config file..... I have.........

;LowSR_switch 0=OFF 1=ON //ne peut être ON que si SR1Value<6500 kS/s // can be ON only if SR1Value<6500 kS/s
; //ne peut être OFF que si SR1Value>=300 kS/s // can be OFF only if SR1Value>=300 kS/s
LowSR_switch=1


I expected the Low SR to be ticked (enabled) but this does not work.

Has anyone else experienced this?

Have been trying to find how to receive two streams on the Mini Tiouner too which is mentioned on the French site.
Also our wiki pages say...
Dual receiver

The Serit NIMs are capable of receiving more than one signal simultaneously; however the BATC hardware and software can only receive one signal at a time. There is provision for a socket on the converter PCB to connect to the second receive output of the NIM for experimentation. F6DZP's dual receive software is still under development and may be available for testing. See his web site at: http://www.vivadatv.org


Does anyone know how to do this?

Its looking like I might have to get another tuner.

73

Nick
G1BVI

[G1BVI]

Well I knocked up a bias Tee and fed power to the LNB.

The tuner works but my conclusion there must be something broken in the tuner between the pin and the output socket ?

73

Nick

[g0mjw]

This seems a common problem with the serits. There is a very small RFC that supplies the bias and it seems highly vulnerable to burning out. The polyfuse ought to have protected it but clearly not. The tuner will be fine.

The clear up a few things

Minitiouner was designed for terrestrial DATV and low SR use - covering 146MHz up to 2.4 GHz. The usefulness of QO-100 is largely a bonus. If you wan;t to receive satellite TV, there are better options.

1 - There is no BATC software for the mintiouner.

2 - There is was no intention to enable a second transport stream, the signals were brought out to a header to allow people to experiment but that's all. There are quite a few other headers too, should others want to develop their own software and hardware.

3 - The French board came along much later. It is ready made and not a kit, it has many more features so do not read about what it can do and complain if BATC board does not do the same.

There is also a ready made board from the DATV-Express team. I am sure it won't be long before there are many others due to QO-100. and they will probably be better with tuners specifically designed for low symbol rates.

Mike

[g8gtz]

I thnk Mike is being slightly misleading on a couple of points when he says:

If you wan;t to receive satellite TV, there are better options.

True if you are talking about broadcast satellite TV but not true, as far as I am aware, if you are talking about the Oscar 100 signals. The MiniTiouner s/w and BATC hardware with Serit tuner performs as well as any other solution currently out there.

There is no BATC software for the mintiouner.

That is true - the MiniTiouner software you run is written by F6DZP and is his copyright.

There is was no intention to enable a second transport stream, the signals were brought out to a header to allow people to experiment but that's all. There are quite a few other headers too, should others want to develop their own software and hardware.

When F6DZP launches his V.9 software, which will decode 2 streams, I would like to think the community will look at the possibiites of a daughter board connected to the 2nd TS header to bring out the 2nd stream for the BATC PCB.

The French board came along much later. It is ready made and not a kit, it has many more features so do not read about what it can do and complain if BATC board does not do the same.

Fair comment but apart from the 2nd stream output, can you be more specific Mike?

There is also a ready made board from the DATV-Express team.

The DATVExpress board, as I understand it, is similar to the BATC board but does not have an a second stream output or the potential to fit one.

73
Noel - G8GTZ

[DL1BJV]

As Mike gomjw stated, shorting the F-Plugs will almost certainly fry the RFC in the Serit Tuner. In case of a short circuit, the Polyfuse (F2) rated at 300 or 500mA can take up to 3 seconds to respond, too long. Precautions should also be taken when connecting certain antenna types, e.g. Ring feeds, Bi-Quads, folded dipoles which may also cause damage as they represent a DC short. It is not impossible but quite difficult to replace the RFC in the Serit Tuner. Modern Sat-Receivers are well protected but unfortunately not the MiniTiouner V2.

73 Wolfgang DL1BJV

[G1BVI]

Thanks all.
Not sure how it blew but hey thats the way it goes. I have a solution.
I did not realise there was a new version of F6DZPs in the pipeline but searching back in recent posts I now see this.

I use Firefox and used to be able to just open a bookmark and see all the recent posts.
Now Mozilla have updated this does not work.
I must find a decent news group addon for firefox.

Anyway it seems it will be possible in the future to bring in a second stream with some kind of USB hardware modification.
I see Noel has asked JP but does not appear to have an answer yet.

Back to my original post, I will be using Mini Tiouner on Oscar 100.

I changed the Low SR in the config file to a 1 and nothing seemed to happen on the GUI.
Have others experienced this?
I did not want to bother JP if it is only me.

What other better ways are there to receive Oscar 100 please Mike?

I was going to try and put up a 1m dish today but it nearly got wrenched out of my hands in this wind...
Hope no gets any damage to their installations

73
Nick

[G8GKQ]

Hi Nick

I am having similar issues with the "Low SR" flag in the minitioune.ini file. Strange, because I thought that it used to work.

Wise decision on the dish. Mine has already moved slightly - beacon MER down from 8 to 6 this morning.

Dave, G8GKQ

[g0mjw]

I have the same with the low SR flag. Try changing its sense perhaps.

I have already explained I meant better solutions for Broadcast TV. However, it will not be long before we can decode low SR DATV efficiently in software. The developers are making excellent progress.

The wind is bad here - not good for dish work. Not enough to fell the troublesome trees though.

Mike

[F6DZP]

Hello,

some answers:

* never use "low SR" option with Serit NIM, you will see that it adds noise to your signal. Low SR mode is obliged in some circumstances with Eardatek or Sharp NIM.

very low SR as 125 KS/s needs to have a very good ppm_calibration of the NIM quartz. Imagine that the quartz gives you a Frequency 70 kHz far from the real frequency and your are outside the derotator scan. If you add the LNB Pll ppm_calibration, it will be difficult to lock on QO-100 SR125 signal.
Minitioune v0.9 use this kind of calibration to correct all derotator search. I will describe a procedure for this calibration.


* MiniTiounerPro has the possibility to render 2 streams at same time. MiniTiouner V2_BATC could do it if you add a second FT2232H to the expansion connector.
The software that can render both TS at same time is called DualTioune., but today it works only DVB-S. I will complete for DVB-S2 when I have finished Minitioune v0.9
MinitiounerPro has also an embedded LNB chip that can send 13v, 18v, 22kHz and diseqc messages. This chip is auto protected and can give 500 mA, but I have tested it at 400mA constant during 1 hour. no need of fuse, all is protected.
MiniTiounerPro has also many others feature like GPIO input and output to command different LNA, relay ... depending of the frequency you are using.
MiniTiounerPro can also send in parallel the TS signal (LVTTL) that can be sent directly to a modulator like SRsystem or DTS1

We are preparing MiniTiounerPro V2 that will have 2 LNB chips allowing to send different voltage and diseqc messages to each Fplug output A and B and will send both TS1 and TS2 to 2 parallel output.
MiniTiounerPro V2 could be bought outside the REF shop, allowing to all people to buy one.
Price will be the same: about 100 euros

* Minitioune V0.9 has been worked firstly for DX efficiency ( a new "Solo mode") and Derotator parameters in memory for a very quick relock when we have QSB with a DX station.
Minitioune V0.9 has now new features specially for QO-100:
- when we lock on a station, if we loose it we are no more attracted by the beacon signal
- a SR wide scan option allows us to ask a SR400 and be able to lock on SR250, SR333 and SR500.
- we can use minitioune v0.9 with a config parameter in the command line.
- we can send from any other computer( Rpi, PC, MAC...) and software a complete command via UDP.
- ppm_calibration for very low SR

Today it is beta tested by different OM, so it will be release after this last step.
(and I will be able to finish DualTioune).

last remark: a French OM has made a little pcb for adding the same LNB chip as MiniTiounerPro uses, to the MiniTiounerV2_BATC, and I am preparing to add this option in the config.ini file.

73
Jean-Pierre F6DZP

[G1BVI]

Thank you for your very informative and interesting reply Jean-Pierre

The advice I have read on this forum is that the Low SR option should be enabled to help resolve Oscar 100, so I think your description and advice about NOT using it should be added to our next CQTV to advise the many users of the BATC Mini Tiouner V2 that this is not the case.

It sounds like v 0.9 is a leap ahead of the current version that I thought already had almost everything

May I thank you and all your Beta team for the hard work and time that you must be putting in to this project.

73
Nick G1BVI