Gale Winds - Sat ASC1 mover off by 16 ticks

[iBoston]

We had some hellish winds yesterday. This morning i went to watch something and i found out i was off by 16 counts. It was easy to fix, i moved to my most western satellite, jumped 16 more counts, and reset the sat positions. That is now fixed, but the question remains, how the heck did it get off like that?

Everything appears to be okay. I jumped across the arc and its catching everything. So, it didn't rotate the pole or move the dish. Maybe a power glitch??

Any thoughts?

 

[Titanium]

If the power was going on/off, this is most likely the cause. Flickering power during a repower may cause conflicts.

This could happen if the STB is restarting and issuing GoTo commands (or because of loss of signal), while the ASC1 is powering up. If the ASC1 is in movement when the power flickers, it will not have a reference of current position when it reboots.

 

[Magic Static]

I've experienced this too but I found that it's not always the dish mover that's messing up. After some high winds I would sometimes realign the dish 10 clicks sometimes but a while later I would have to adjust it back. I'm thinking the wind pushes on the dish hard enough to tweak it a bit out of shape causing the alignment error and after a bit of moving back and forth the dish shakes it off and the dish goes back into shape.

 

[Inclined Orbit]

I've had a problem with some commercial dishes where they would randomly loose their cal buy some number of clicks. I found the long lines from the hall effect sensors in the actuator arms were subject to RF or EMI interference which would cause the controller to bump up a few clicks even though the dish had not moved. Everything was fine until you moved the dish and then everything was off by some amount on all sats.

I added some resistors across the hall sensor inputs on the controller and that seemed to calm things down and I had to look up the specs for the controller to see what peak voltage it expected on the pulses then I tried several values of resistance until I got the most resistive loading without going out of spec on the pulses. The resistors then absorbed some of the EMI picked up on the long cables, just enough to fix the original problem without causing any new problems.

I suspect static electricity from blowing winds or nearby lightning strikes could also induce voltage onto the hall effect lines and cause a controller to add clicks.

 

[iBoston]

If the power was going on/off, this is most likely the cause. Flickering power during a repower may cause conflicts.

This could happen if the STB is restarting and issuing GoTo commands (or because of loss of signal), while the ASC1 is powering up. If the ASC1 is in movement when the power flickers, it will not have a reference of current position when it reboots.

I was out all that day, but i know the power flickered or went off at least once, because the oven was blinking 12:00, which means there was some power interruption. I thought it was bizarre, but it was a quick fix.

 

[arlo]

My 12 footer will do the same thing in real high winds. It's a you-know-what peaking every single sat again. So I pull the motor where signal is best, hit go to on the ASC-1 and bolt it back up.
I was under the impression there was a setting to reposition globally in the menu.

 

[Titanium]

Drive to 0000 then Offset by the number of counts that the says are off. Go into the Reset menu and do a Position Reset. The 0000 reference position is now recalibrated.

The ASC1 will not add or delete position counts after the motor position cycle completes. When the positioning logic is completed, the sensor circuit is disabled. This was done to prevent EMI or other interference from registering as switch counts after a actuator lands and times out.

On a side note: As switches fail, they often exhibit stutter or severely misshapen open/close cycles which are read by controllers as cycle counts. This stutter often occurs only when the motor travels in one direction. A magnetized switch responds differently when exposed to different trigger magnets and can result in odd miscounts.

 

[arlo]

Drive to 0000 then Offset by the number of counts that the says are off. Go into the Reset menu and do a Position Reset. The 0000 reference position is now recalibrated.

The ASC1 will not add or delete position counts after the motor position cycle completes. When the positioning logic is completed, the sensor circuit is disabled. This was done to prevent EMI or other interference from registering as switch counts after a actuator lands and times out.

On a side note: As switches fail, they often exhibit stutter or severely misshapen open/close cycles which are read by controllers as cycle counts. This stutter often occurs only when the motor travels in one direction. A magnetized switch responds differently when exposed to different trigger magnets and can result in odd miscounts.

Not to hijack but now it makes sense. My arc starts at 133W at 135 counts or so. Soft limit is at 100. Limit switch is around 50.
I'm guessing I should have actually set my limits below 0000 to get this to work right then.

 

[Comptech]

First off I want to say the acs1 is a great box. But I must admit it needs to go on a UPS. I have two of them, and power outages do weird thing with them. Easy to fix, but why they lose there mind at times baffle me. But I am to lazy and cheap to put them on a UPS.

 

[Titanium]

I set 0000 reference on my eastern most satellite and set the mechanical limit switch 20 counts further east.

I never use soft limits, because I have hardware limit switches.

 

[Comptech]

Brian, I love your boxes, but between the two of them, one has lost it's mind twice and the other once. I mentioned before I need them on a UPS, but why total resets including sat lists?

 

[Comptech]

And this is only 3 times in five years with two boxes. it does seem to do with power, but one box will be fine when the other needs a complete restore. Weird.

 

[Titanium]

If your STB reboots to a different satellite than last watched, the STB will issue a GoTo command while the ASC1 is rebooting and the motor is moving. Not always a good combination and normally, this wouldn't be a problem. Unless... there is a power flicker (outage) during the motor movement. If the ASC1 is rebooted while a motor movement is occurring, the last referenced position is shifted to the current position.

This is an issue with any external controller unit which uses DiSEqC 1.2 commands from a STB. Current position counts (if not parked on the selected satellite) are referenced to last satellite position during a power interruption.

First off I want to say the acs1 is a great box. But I must admit it needs to go on a UPS. I have two of them, and power outages do weird thing with them. Easy to fix, but why they lose there mind at times baffle me. But I am to lazy and cheap to put them on a UPS.

 

[Comptech]

Both are stand alone units, I do not use mt stb's to move them. Again great units, but every once in awhile they loose there mind. Not a big deal, wish I had two more.

 

[Comptech]

I am switching to a ADL feed with C and Ku on the 10 foot unimesh perforated dish, running trough a 4 x8 switch so just looking for pointers.
Your box works fine, Never used a servo, but hope the experience is great