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Thread: Restarting stored UEC4121 farce box after a few years

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    Junior Member hca's Avatar
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    Default Restarting stored UEC4121 farce box after a few years

    Hello folks,

    I have pulled a couple of UEC boxes which I purchased in a moment of madness back in 2012 from the cupboard after a few years, at shutdown both were working fine.

    So I think normal for these low end but overpriced devices, both had bad caps in the PSUs causing the 5 volt rail to be 4. One seems to have gone deaf, and somehow the other a had dirty smartcard contact.

    On returning one to air, allbeit low but stable signal at 37 occasionally 43 but 100% signal sending the rehit a few times over a few days but no response on Ch 800. It this time no indication of the smartcard not working, It did an update OTA in a timely manner with no issues, but still no response to the rehit. Further investigation in the menu reveals no smartcard. A bit of contact cleaner in the right place and all good, I now have OK and the correct card number shown in the menu.

    but still no success with rehit.

    While I would like to think sorting the dish signal level might solve it, I have my doubts, my questions are:

    1= is a 3 or 4 years offline too long for just a rehit to bring it into service?
    2= has it doing the upgrade while without the smartcard working caused a new issue?


    Possibly some one can shed some light?



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    Were the reception certificates fix or traveler ?

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    Junior Member hca's Avatar
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    Default its come good

    Quote Originally Posted by hos here View Post
    Were the reception certificates fix or traveler ?
    Hi Hos,

    Thanks for the reply, its normal fixed station.

    I see its got itself sorted today, but I cant learn much from it.

    Its taken about 4 days to get the authorisation working, the signals just there and degrades with cloud over Belrose. But I would have expected the addressed data would have much more FEC and redundancy like the old bmac had so the signal should be enough.

    Possibly the OTA firmware update with out the smartcard working had an effect.

    Maybe the whole setup is a bit flakey and patience is a virtue. See what happens when I sort out the deaf front end in the second one.
    Last edited by hca; 05-05-20 at 02:23 PM.

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    Hi

    Nothing sinaster there, the card probably took several days to get a hit as it’s been out of service for a while. An will cycle through the complete card database. Optus do not normally take smart cards out of service unless advices by the registered owner.

    If your receiver was off or no signal when you hit the card. You usually just wait for the card details to cycle through to get the EMM update and CH IDs written to the card.

    Over the air update is just that. It is there to fix receiver only issues not smartcard, the card update is done usually automatically via the data stream.

    If you are getting ch 800 it means your setup is working. Low signal issue will only effect reception. If you are loosing signal in cloudy coding looks like ur dish needs a tweak.

    First check with old boxes is to see if the smartcard is reconized in the box. Once that is confirmed move onto seeing if ch 800 is receiver then hit the smartcard.
    Last edited by cmoore; 07-05-20 at 10:16 PM.

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    Junior Member hca's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by cmoore View Post
    Hi

    Nothing sinaster there, the card probably took several days to get a hit as it’s been out of service for a while. An will cycle through the complete card database. Optus do not normally take smart cards out of service unless advices by the registered owner.

    If your receiver was off or no signal when you hit the card. You usually just wait for the card details to cycle through to get the EMM update and CH IDs written to the card.

    Over the air update is just that. It is there to fix receiver only issues not smartcard, the card update is done usually automatically via the data stream.

    If you are getting ch 800 it means your setup is working. Low signal issue will only effect reception. If you are loosing signal in cloudy coding looks like ur dish needs a tweak.

    First check with old boxes is to see if the smercrs is reconized in the box. Once that is confirmed move onto seeing if ch 800 is receiver then hit the smartcard.


    Thank you for the informative response.


    Sounds like as you say it needed the system to roll through till the hit message would work, about 20 hits in 4 days with no joy and then the next day it all just starts working.


    Yes signal is low but adequate, 3 options, chop the tree, relocate the dish or put the receiver back in the cupboard for another 4 years and just stay with the C band. I only resurrected it for local info on covid but based on the adds and garbage I have seen since it has been working, I think options 2 and 3 and use the dish to play with the Himawari data on JSAT-2b.

    I could not find and reference to "smercrs" in the system info pages?

    Cheers.

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    Oooops smercrs =. Smartcard Bloody auto correct I did not look at my post before sending it

    VAST has little interest for me these days end yes Weather satellite is my next project.

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    Junior Member hca's Avatar
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    OK,
    I just figured smercrs was something I had never heard of.

    This needs a new thread but briefly, I thought I had a start on the JA wx bird. Its a bit tight at 2 degrees but I was going to try to put an offset cband feed in the same dish as A10 after relocating it. If not bye bye A10.

    I have a pair of DM500s clones leftover from Aurora, I doubt I could fit the Xrit Jpeg processing in them but I did find some code to put in them that turns them in to a straight IP receiver. I think that might produce the equivalent of the Novra receiver Learjets using from a DM500S.

    SO both worked when checked them out a week ago, now I am geared to flash one of them to try it, ones dead but all the voltage regs are ok, and the other now boots up, kicks off the cam code and and hangs at the blue panel.

    One step forward, two steps backward!

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