External LNB power with the MiniTiouner question please?

Discussion about the MiniTiouner board and the MiniTiouner Digital ATV Receive Software. See also http://www.vivadatv.org/index.php
G4KLB
Posts: 244
Joined: Wed May 28, 2008 10:46 am

Re: External LNB power with the MiniTiouner question please?

Post by G4KLB » Sat Jul 17, 2021 12:38 am

Hi Nigel,

The skew isn't super critical, so you can fine tune that latter.

" i thought you either applied 18v or turned the lnb 90deg to get horizontal but not both" Yes that is correct, the only time the LNB would need to be rotated 90 degrees is if you only had 13V available.

Your setting is correct 18V for TV (Horizontal) and 13V for the narrowband voice (Vertical)

With the Bullseye LNB you can only use Output 1 (green) the red one is for monitoring the LO. I expect you knew that but just thinking what else may be wrong.

I assume you are using a MiniTiouner for the receiver. The beacon is DVB-S2 H265 SR1500 so not all set top boxes can do that.

g4eml
Posts: 666
Joined: Thu Apr 26, 2018 9:36 am

Re: External LNB power with the MiniTiouner question please?

Post by g4eml » Sat Jul 17, 2021 9:21 am

Hi Nigel,

You also say ‘I managed to get all the dish setup with a standard lnb and fed into a freesat box and was able to get the tv perfectly‘. What TV signals were you using for this? If you were seeing freesat channels then you are probably pointing at the astra satellite. Es’hail2 is about 3 degrees further to the right.

Colin.

2E0NJT
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Joined: Sun Jun 20, 2021 2:25 pm

Re: External LNB power with the MiniTiouner question please?

Post by 2E0NJT » Sat Jul 17, 2021 10:18 pm

Hi colin,
Thanks for the reply, during the time its taken for my message to go up i have had some success but i think my minitiouner may be faulty.
Yes i did use astra satellite for the tv part this was to get me close to the qo100 satellite and was just to test the equipment.

My setup consists of a laptop with all the software related to minitiouner and also a portsdown 4 i have been using the software with the tuner to get the dish aligned as theres more things to fiddle with to see if you have a signal, i have been trying to get the beacon on a vertical setup not realising it should be horizontal so this is what i get now.
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As you can see i have all the meters on full receive signal is good but it will not show decode the beacon photo just says bad codec.
It dosent show on screen but i do have all the LAV decoders loaded and the test my tuner software all worked and did what is should including showing moving video and sound.

So as it was now locking on properly i unpluged the tuned board from the laptop and plugged it into the portsdown 4, i have the 7” rasb pi screen and an 8 gb rasp pi with the latest software i do have an limesdr mini connected but im still building the pa so no transmit yet, went to receive changed a few settings and for the first time i saw a list on screen of freq,mer,offset,and several other things but when it changed to what should be the beacon picture all i get is a black screen, is it possible ive done something wrong on the tuner board or is the tuner module faulty i have no way to tell.
Thanks
Nigel

2E0NJT
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Joined: Sun Jun 20, 2021 2:25 pm

Re: External LNB power with the MiniTiouner question please?

Post by 2E0NJT » Sat Jul 17, 2021 10:27 pm

This was a test with scan and tune as well
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g4eml
Posts: 666
Joined: Thu Apr 26, 2018 9:36 am

Re: External LNB power with the MiniTiouner question please?

Post by g4eml » Sat Jul 17, 2021 11:02 pm

Some thoughts...

It looks like you are receiving the signal OK (all the green lights and D4 signal) but the graphics display is not working, that red square on the right should be green.

You may also need to click the Auto PID switch on the top right, that often gets things decoding correctly.

Do you have VLC installed correctly? It needs the 32 bit version to work correctly.

Of course the beacon also regularly fails with corrupted data, but you can normally still see something.

There have also been others that had similar problems, when they closely inspected the minitiouner PCB they found solder bridges across some of the tuner pins. A shorted data line will give a corrupted video stream which won’t decode.

Colin.

g0mjw
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Joined: Sat Sep 20, 2014 9:15 am

Re: External LNB power with the MiniTiouner question please?

Post by g0mjw » Sun Jul 18, 2021 9:30 am

It might help us diagnose if you could take screenshot (rather than a photo) as it's difficult to read the text but it looks like there is no data getting through. I see that is quite an old version of minitioune and while it works OK, the latest version has some more useful debug data available in expert mode that analyses the transport stream that might help in diagnosing the problem.

It would be good if you could record a little of the transport stream and post it in a zip file, this will show up any problems with the bit stream like shorted data lines.

Mike

2E0NJT
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Re: External LNB power with the MiniTiouner question please?

Post by 2E0NJT » Sun Jul 18, 2021 10:16 am

Colin and Mike

Thank you both for your input, i have checked that i have the correct VLC and i do, i have also visually inspected all the soldering on the tuner board using a digital microscope and its all good, i did find some solder paste residue on the usb board not my work so i have reflowed it using a hot air tool this now seems good as well.

I still cannot get any video on the laptop and the TS rate has dropped a bit today not sure if thats my fault or just atmospherics, originally when i tested the tuner board using the software the speed it reads and writes to the i2c was about 65% ive changed the usb lead and its now up to 70% not sure how much that helps.
Below you will find 2 photos 1 of the software on the laptop the other is from the portsdown4 this should decode the video with no extra software but no joy there either i have a feeling the serit tuner module maybe faulty, i will do as mike suggests and record the bitstream and upload it later.
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I have a massive amount of test equipment in my shack but im not very good with video equipment could either of you let me know what i should see coming out of the data pins on the serit tuner, ive got digital storage scopes that go up to 500mhz and several spectrum analysers but have no idea what to be looking for as a video data stream.

G8GKQ
Site Admin
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Re: External LNB power with the MiniTiouner question please?

Post by G8GKQ » Sun Jul 18, 2021 10:28 am

Nigel

Which button did you use to start the receiver on the Portsdown 4?

Dave

2E0NJT
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Joined: Sun Jun 20, 2021 2:25 pm

Re: External LNB power with the MiniTiouner question please?

Post by 2E0NJT » Sun Jul 18, 2021 11:07 am

Dave, on the new software you enter the RX button and then at the bottom left the RECEIVE button, but ive tried them all.
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g0mjw
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Joined: Sat Sep 20, 2014 9:15 am

Re: External LNB power with the MiniTiouner question please?

Post by g0mjw » Sun Jul 18, 2021 11:13 am

I think we need to see the recorded TS file.

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