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Operation of the MotoSAT Internet System
March 15, 2006
A Customer Courtesy White Paper by Jackson Pemberton at SignalRiver
Table of Contents
Getting Acquainted with Your System
System Hardware Configuration
Normal Operation
Siting Your Vehicle
Levelish is Good Enough
Satellite Basics - A Little Exercise in Dish Pointing
Orientation of the Vehicle
Obstacle Issues
Problems with Motion Stow
Solar Outages
What To Do When It Doesn't Work
The System Seems to be Working But Is Not Locking On
The System is Finding Other Satellites But Not the Right One
The System Isn't Trying to Find the Satellite
Who to Call
Getting Acquainted with Your System
The requirements for a system to automatically find and lock your dish onto a satellite are extensive and complex. Luckily you don't have to be a satellite engineer to use the system. However, the closer you can get yourself that that level of understanding, the more comfortable you will be with it and the more often you will detect and understand what is or is not happening. This can only make your use of the system more efficient and more enjoyable. In this matter a little truly goes a long way. So take a few minutes to study this material and learn some of the ins and outs of a truly remarkable technology. Some day you will be really glad you did.
Here are a few ideas to help you get acquainted and comfortable with your system:
1. Read through the Dish Controller manual that came with your system and note the meaning of the lights and the text data on the Controller's main screen. After only a few pointings you will begin to get a sense of what should be happening and what needs to happen to establish the connection with the satellite. This will be very useful to you when things aren't going the way they should. The more you are familiar with normal operation the more you will be able to take the actions needed to get a successful connection.
2. If you haven't already done so, power up your system (See Normal Operations below for some details on powering up.) and open your web browser to this page -
http://192.168.0.250
This will give you the main Dish Controller screen. Set this up as a Favorite (Internet Explorer) or a Bookmark (Safari) or however you like to create quick links in your web browser to your favorite web sites. Now change the URL to -
http://192.168.0.1
This is the main modem screen. Set up a similar quick link to this page in your browser.
3. Watch everything you can while the Dish Controller (D2, D3, ...) is pointing the dish. Watch the movement of the dish, watch the lights on the Controller and on the modems (DW6000, DW7000, ...).
4. Especially try to watch the web browser screen for the Dish Controller. The Signal Quality (should be in the range of 50 to 80 when locking onto a satellite) and Signal Strength (should be 400 to 1000). The Rx (receive) status and Tx (transmit) Status are also important to note. The next line down is the System Status line where you will see the most detailed information on activity in the system. (The Controller manual will give you a lot of help understanding the terminology you will see in these messages. It will help you a lot to have your manual open to those pages the first several times you use your system so that you can read the brief descriptions of the meanings of the messages you will see.)
5. There are a couple of things that will help you comprehend the data being shown you on the Controller web screen. Signal Quality, Signal Strength, Rx, Tx and System Status messages all originate in the modem box and are picked up by the Controller and displayed for you so that you will rarely need to visit the modem web screen. However, if you want more information on the meaning of a particular message, say TxCode 8 (means transmit message 8), then you can go to the modem's System Status Screen where you will see the same message but it will be underlined and is a clickable link to more information about the meaning of the code and its abbreviated message.
System Hardware Configuration
Near the back of the Dish Controller manual (the usual configurations are D2 page number 21, D3 page 18) you will see a few pages with diagrams of various system configurations. These show the electronic boxes of the system and how they are connected to one another. You should identify the page that illustrates your configuration and make a note of it so that if you ever need to disconnect and reconnect any cables you will be able to do so with confidence. You will want to make some detailed notes of your own on the diagram. For example, which connectors on the switch (smallest box: lights on the front and ethernet cables on the back) are not used (there are typically two or three connectors that should always be empty unless technical support tells you otherwise during a trouble shooting activity).
MAKE DETAILED NOTES OF THE ENTIRE PHYSICAL CONFIGURATION - THIS WILL TAKE 5 OR 10 MINUTES NOW AND CAN LITERALLY SAVE YOU HOURS LATER. What you want is a copy of the page in the Controller manual that describes your particular physical configuration (the usual configurations are D2 page number 21, D3 page 18), a copy of the Configuration screen for the Controller showing all the settings, and a copy of the System Information screen for the modem showing the satellite, the frequency, the Rx and Tx polarizations, etc. and a hand sketch of the back of the ethernet switch showing which ports are connected to which devices and especially which ports are empty. If you are using a wireless router include a similar sketch of the cable connections to it. Keep these pages where you can find them - maybe under the Controller - so they will be ready when the day comes you need to be sure everything is set up correctly. Warning: be careful not to store any papers where they block the flow of air through the electronics boxes.
Normal Operation
Turn on the power to all the equipment. The Dish Controller has a power switch that you must depress to turn on the power if it has been off for any reason. The modem and most LAN switches (or routers if you have one of those) don't have switches and will come on when you apply power to their respective power cords.
Give the system about 30 seconds for the electronic devices to go through their boot cycles. While you are waiting for that, launch your web browser. (Note: If you have a wireless LAN, you will need to wait for your wireless device to go through its boot up before attempting to launch your web browser.) You can wait until the Controller's GPS light comes on or you can go ahead and press the search button (after waiting the initial 30 seconds). It is a bit safer to get the Dish Controller screen in your web browser first, that way you know the Controller has finished its boot cycle and then you can just click the Search button on that web page. The Controller will not begin a search until it has acquired GPS position and if you gave a search command earlier it should start the search as soon as the GPS light goes on.
The status of the lights on the Controller box are displayed at the very top of the Controller web screen and since that screen is automatically refreshed every few seconds, you can watch the lights from that screen. This is especially useful if your Controller is out of sight in a cabinet.
Normal operation of the D3 Controller is that the dish is raised to the elevation of the stationary satellite belt and rotated until it finds a satellite. Then it tweaks its pointing until it peaks the signal strength and quality from that one, gets its identification, computes the exact position of your satellite and adjusts elevation and azimuth to point at your satellite.
When the search and connect to the internet process is complete, all the lights on the modem will be lit. The System light is the last to go on and indicates that you are connected to the internet from your dish to the satellite and back down to the Network Operations Center (NOC) in Maryland or Las Vegas. Once you are connected, you can safely turn off the Dish Controller if you like. Of course, if you have an F1 system you will want to leave Controller power on so those nifty blue LED's can illuminate your cool dish.
When you finish using the internet you may want to power down your equipment (especially if you are running on battery power only). It is not at all necessary to stow the dish before powering down (unless you are experiencing winds over 50 mph or you plan to move soon, of course). If you have left your dish pointed at the satellite and powered down the equipment and want to reconnect, all you need to do is power up your system as normal except that you do not need to turn on the Controller. It's job is only to find and help lock onto your satellite. Once that is done you can turn it off and leave it off until you need to stow the dish.
When you reconnect this way, you can just watch the lights on the modem and when the System light goes on you are connected. Or, if that is inconvenient, just watch the modem's main screen. When the System Status button (upper left on the main screen) turns green the System light on its front panel has also turned on.
Siting Your Vehicle
Levelish is Good Enough
Generally speaking, the more level the dish mount the faster the Controller will find and lock onto your satellite. However, it is not necessary to agonize over this. The new Controllers use a method that make a level vehicle less critical. If you look around the vehicle, and particularly if you get out and walk around it and it looks pretty good or "levelish" as we say, that is good enough. To put some numbers on this: if the length of your rig is 20 feet then if one end is only 3 or 4 inches lower than the other end, you are good enough for sure. Normally, by the time you have leveled your rig so it is comfortable to be in it, it is plenty level enough for the MotoSAT hardware to quickly find the satellite.
Satellite Basics - A Little Exercise in Dish Pointing
All the television and internet satellites are in stationary orbits. In order to be stationary they have to be in an exact orbit approximately 22,000 miles above the earth and straight up from the equator (in the equatorial plane).
You can get a pretty good idea of where your satellite is by using a world globe. Read the section below about Obstacle Issues and then come back here and read this. The Obstacle Issues will help you see the value of this exercise.
If your "bird" flies above the 95th meridian (at 95 degrees West longitude), for example, then find that longitude on the globe, estimate the diameter of the globe and find the point in space three earth diameters straight up from the intersection of the Equator and the 95th meridian. Then find your position on the globe and see how the dish will have to be aimed to point at that satellite. Now suppose you are at some particular place like your home and if you can rotate the globe until that point is at the very top of the globe then note where the satellite will appear to be three earth diameters above the equator. This gives you the angle above the horizontal that your satellite occupies. Now pretend you are moving to a new location a few hundred miles on the globe and notice how the dish will have to be pointed a little differently from that location. Do this several times paying particular attention to the angles (compass direction and elevation) until you get a bit of a feel for the changes in the angles. Move your location point on the surface of the earth straight away from the satellite and note that the compass heading is almost identical and then try some East and West movements. If you will be using your dish in the forest or in cities or camp grounds, you will find this little exercise helpful in finding holes for your dish to look through. See Obstacle Issues below.
Orientation of the Vehicle
Your system will find the satellite regardless of what compass heading your vehicle is pointing. However, when you have a choice, you can make the job faster for your system if you can minimize the amount of rotation your dish mount has to do to find it. Since the dish is pointing straight back when it first rises from the stowed position it would be ideal if the satellite were straight behind you so that no rotation would be needed. But, that is probably the worst position to attempt because if your position is off a few degrees, the dish will have to rotate almost full circle to find your bird. Worse yet, it may need to scan back and forth a little and with your rig pointed straight away, it will be traveling full circle two or three times before it is happy. This is to be avoided unless you just want to kill some time watching your dish swing around and around.
Therefore the optimum compass heading for your vehicle is with the view out the front of your rig at least several degrees toward the West from straight away from your satellite. So, in the coterminous 48 states, your vehicle's optimum heading will be toward the NorthWest. If you are using the bird at 127W, then you can probably get away with pointing your vehicle straight North because the satellite will definitely be West of you. The exercise in Satellite Basics above will help you visualize all this.
Obstacle Issues
To function, your dish must have a totally unobstructed view of the satellite - no mountains, cliffs, buildings, and no tree branches (well you can usually get away with a few skinny twigs in the way, but you are sure asking for trouble is there are even tiny leaves on those twigs (larger dishes are more tolerant of course)). Here are a couple tricks that will help you place your vehicle where your satellite will be in view of your dish.
When you have established a connection, take your magnetic compass outside and stand on a line straight behind your dish. If you move back and forth a bit you can get a pretty accurate position to stand on. Now use your magnetic compass and write down or memorize the direction the dish is pointing. Also make note of the elevation angle of the dish (how far up from horizontal it is pointing). You can get a pretty accurate record of this by standing off to the side of your dish and drawing a diagram showing the angle of the dish in respect to a vertical or a horizontal line. Now when you arrive at your next destination where you want to get internet access and there is a question about whether your dish will have a clear view of your satellite, you can get out your compass and stand where you plan to park and see if there is a space between the obstacles where your dish can "see" through. When you find a spot, move your vehicle until the dish is positioned so as to look through that hole.
If you are in the coterminous 48 states, and have moved a few hundred miles East or West, you may need to try to estimate how much change in the pointing angle your movement will require. If you have moved directly toward or directly away from the satellite, it will be on the same compass heading as before but a little higher if you moved toward it or lower if you moved away.
If you literally have to point through a hole (a hole with obstructions above and/or below as well as on the sides) then finding the place to position the dish is a little more complicated - but not impossible. This is when your diagram of the elevation angle of your dish from the previous connection will come in handy. You must understand here, that the dish is not pointing at the elevation angle that it appears to be. Read on.
Important: the dish doesn't point along a line exactly perpendicular to itself, but at an angle about 12 degrees above that. Stand off to the side of your dish while it is raised to a typical "locked on a satellite" angle and note that the feed horn and LNB (the equipment at the end of the arm that points toward the center of the dish) are not on a line perpendicular to the face of the dish. Imagine the dish has a large mirror laid against it and draw an imaginary line from the feed horn/LNB to the center of the dish you will see that it is not perpendicular to the imaginary mirror. If you imagine a line from the feed horn to the mirror and reflect that line like the mirror would, the line will extend out to the satellite. The dish is a reflector, like the mirror, but it is curved so as to focus a beam to and from the satellite. Imagining the dish as a flat mirror helps you see the angles that arriving and leaving signals are taking while the dish is pointed at your satellite.
To say this another way: if you are supposing that the dish points exactly the way it appears to point, you are estimating an angle about 12 degrees lower than it really is. You must take this into account if you are trying to peek through a hole in the trees. You will also notice that you can get a connection even though it looks like the dish is pointed into the top of a tree since it is actually "looking" about 12 degrees higher than it appears to be.
Problems with Motion Stow
One of the options you can set on the Configuration Screen of the Conroller is to enable or disable Motion
Stow. If the Controller has power and you move the vehicle more than a few feet the GPS in the dish mount will notify the Controller that the vehicle is moving. If Motion Stow is enabled the Controller will immediately start the Stow Dish sequence. This all seems great, but many operators turn off their A/C power before they move the vehicle and that kills the power to the Controller so of course Motion Stow will not happen. Experience has show that many people do not leave the Controller turned on after the dish is pointed and locked on. Motion Stow can become a trap if you depend on it to correct an oversight of not stowing the dish before you move. Therefore both MotoSAT and SignalRiver recommend that Motion Stow be left disabled. If you really want to use it consider connecting the Controller directly to the 12VDC power of your vehicle. You should also put a tag next to the power switch of the Controller to remind you to never turn it off.
Solar Outages
This is just an FYI we quote.
By: Tim Gibbs, Technical Support Manager, MotoSAT
Every spring and fall during the equinox, the sun passes directly behind the geosynchronous satellites, creating interference, which can degrade the signal from the satellite. This can temporarily disrupt satellite reception and cause a phenomenon known as a solar or sun outage. This is common to all geosynchronous satellite communications. When the sun passes directly behind the satellite, as viewed from the receiving earth station, reception may be degraded or sometimes even drowned-out by the overwhelming interference from the sun. The length of the period of interference is typically short (10 to 20 minutes), and it occurs through out the day, usually between 7:00am and 4:00pm. However, the exact date, time and duration of the solar outage risk period is dependent on many factors including: the receive site's lat/ long, the satellite's orbital slot, the earth station antenna size and pointing accuracy, and the inclination of the satellite. Solar outages affect the network twice a year (February/March and September/October for most of North America) for a period of about 7-10 days each occurrence. This year it is due to occur (approximately) Oct 5th through 11th, although this is variable depending on your location and the satellite at which you are pointed.
Solar outage calculator: http://www.panamsat.com/global_network/tools.asp
What To Do When It Doesn't Work
This is when you will wish you had made some detailed notes of the normal status and progress of a successful connection. Get out your notes and review them while you attempt a search and notice when things deviate from normal and what the message(s) are telling you.
The System Seems to be Working But Is Not Locking On
If you have clicked the "Update Setting" button on the Configuration page of the Dish Controller's screen, then you will need to "Calibrate Dish" before the system will work properly. The "Calibrate Dish" command is a link you can click near the center (up and down) of the extreme left side of the Dish Controller's main screen.
If you gave a Search command and the dish has gone to maximum elevation angle and is rotating around as far as it can then it is simply finding the limits of its elevation and rotational travel in order to set its zero angles properly. When it has completed that it should begin the search. If it doesn't give it a new search command. This usually happens after you "Update Settings" and forget to "Calibrate Dish".
If you are having trouble getting locked on, then you will be trying more than once. If a couple attempts fail, power down the equipment and wait 20 seconds and power it up again to force the components to reboot themselves then try a new search. Before you try the fourth time, get ready to make some notes while you do this fourth attempt. Now get the modem's main screen in a second web browser window and click on the System Status button and during the attempt note the messages that are appearing. These are the same messages that are appearing on the Dish Controller's main screen. When you see a new message appear note at least the new code. For example:
Tx Code 6
Rx Code 3
Rx Code 9
etc.
On the modem screen there are links to explanations of the codes. These may be very helpful to you. Even if they aren't, if you have to call for technical support, your notes will be very helpful in describing to them exactly what is (or is not) happening.
On the modem screen there is a line about in the middle of the screen that talks about the "first heartbeat". This is an important milestone in the process of doing the "hand shake" with the satellite to establish the internet connection. If the first heart beat has been received, then the satellite and the modem in your rig have communicated with one another and the final "arrangements" for the connection are supposed to be in process. The technical support people with very likely ask you if you have seen this message.
The System is Finding Other Satellites But not the Right One
Normal operation of the D3 Controller is that the dish is raised to the elevation of the stationary satellite belt and rotated until it finds a satellite. Then it peaks the signal from that one, gets its identification, computes the exact position of your satellite and adjusts elevation and azimuth to point at your satellite. If you notice on the Controller screen messages that the system is identifying other satellites you will also see that it immediately positions the dish for your satellite. If it fails to find or is unable to identify it you have a problem. The most likely issue is an obstacle or the dish mount is seriously out of level. Watch where the dish points after it identifies any other satellite and then goes to the position of yours - it should be there. The dish is probably pointing at a tree, pole, power line, a transformer or the dish is covered with snow. It may be that your satellite is "dark" or "off line". They are subject to outages but the problem is typically fixed within a few hours. If your need for a connection is urgent you should call Technical Support at MotoSAT (See below). They will generally know of such outages before you do. Otherwise you can just wait a few minutes or hours and try again.
The System Isn't Trying to Find the Satellite
If the dish isn't being deployed, then there is something more basic. If you have just turned on the power, the GPS light on the Controller probably is not on yet and it can't tell how to begin the search until it gets a fix on your position on the globe. You may just need to give it a few minutes. The positions of the GPS satellites vary from excellent to poor and when they are in a poor arrangement it takes significantly longer for the Controller's GPS subsystem to get a fix on your location on the earth.
Check to be sure each electronic box has power and that the lights are in their normal state. The Controller and the modem each have a LAN light that should always be on. A bit of flickering is probably a good thing here.
If your equipment is located where children (or angry employees?) can get at it you should consider checking the cable connections to assure yourself that the system is still wired correctly. If someone accidentally pulled an ethernet cable out of the switch, for example, they may have guessed which socket to plug it back into and if they guess wrong, it may take you and a technical support person a hour to discover that simple but critical error.
Who To Call
No one likes to call for tech support, but sooner or later you will be doing just that. It's OK. It's a complex system doing a difficult task and things go wrong.
If you have a relatively new system or if you are a new user of only a few months then you should call your installer first. He will want to give you any training that might help you learn the ropes of the system better and if there are installation related issues he will want to be the first to know about them. If he can't help you or if you are an experienced user then you will want to call MotoSAT's tech support. Their number is (800) 247-7486. During their normal office hours choose the tech support option. After hours, just go ahead and type 6001 while you are hearing the greeting.
Your installer is Jackson or Robert Pemberton at SignalRiver. If you are pretty sure the problem is related to your network or that boxes are not talking to one another, or if you can't get both the Dish Controller screen and the modem screen on your browser, then call Robert at (801) 891-6698. Otherwise call Jack at (801) 891-4125.