Periodic Partial or Complete Loss of Signal

[dlmcmurr]

This problem started after I just recently changed from 2 Hoppers & 2 Joeys to 3 Hoppers & 1 Joey. I added 2 DPP44s and another Duo Node. My 1 unused client port and 1 unused host port are terminated. I wanted to check for ideas before I start looking at everything. Is grounding all the DPP44s and Duo Nodes together and to a building ground necessary? I can do that fairly easily. My only ground currently is a ground block outside. The only thing I've eliminated so far is it's happening off both Duo Nodes, so I believe it has to be the first DPP44 if it's not a grounding issue. Running a status check immediately after rebooting looks good. I do have a spare DPP44 but not a spare power inserter. All connections are tight. Hope someone has some ideas as I'm losing man points here.

Thanks,
Dave

 

[dlmcmurr]

I went ahead and grounded everything to a cold water pipe. Just for fun, I measured between the loose ground wire and the pipe just before I connected it and found 0.05 VDC. I also removed the unused Joey and terminated it's client port, too.

 

[dlmcmurr]

Grounding didn't help. Error is 002 and 11-11-25.

 

[ChadT41]

Can you show us a diagram of how everything is connected? It very well may be the DPP44 Switch power supply. Also, and this is just from memory from quite awhile ago, make sure the 44 power coax is plugged into the 1st port.

 

[dlmcmurr]

Chad, here's a quick diagram. All the coax is 3GHz. Only the 10 coax jumpers in the closet are new

Thanks,
Dave

 

[rglore]

Make sure your coax center conductors extend at least the width of a nickel past the connector. The DPP44s center conductor sockets are a bit deep inside.

 

[dlmcmurr]

Hmm, interesting. I had noticed that they were much longer connectors. I'm assuming you mean the thickness of a nickel rather than the width of a nickel, though. I'll have to schedule some downtime as that will be 17 connections to check. Might be a few days before I get that done. Thanks for the reply, rglore.

 

[dlmcmurr]

I replaced several connectors to make the center conductor longer and that seems to have solved that problem. Still got two questions thourgh:

1. On only one Hopper (the one by itself on the node and DPP44), when running a Check Switch, I get the 9 checks, but get 1 red X on Tuner 3 Conn. The letters Conn appear next to the red X. Under Details, the first 2 Sat Inputs report no connection on Port 4, but Sat Input 3 has Error -- Removed duplicate 77 satellite on port 4, and several lines below that, Port4 -- Feed Good Connection, No Signal. I have a spare DPP44 but no spare node to test with. Doesn't seem to be hurting anything, though.

2. All three Hoppers are now experiencing problems with 30sec skip and 10sec rewind sometimes taking 15 to 20 seconds to react. This may have begun when I enabled PTAT on 1 Hopper with the start of the new season.

Any comments on either of these issues?

Thanks,
Dave

 

[ChadT41]

The only time I have seen tuner 3 and conn only, is when the node was bypassed for whatever reason. We tested it in the office when I was there, and tuner 1 worked, and tuner two was intermittent.

 

[dlmcmurr]

Since you mentioned the node, I swapped the hopper to the unused host port and the problem went away. The unused host and client ports are terminated.

Now, if I can solve the other problem, all will be good. Thanks for your thoughts, Chad.

Dave