Titanium Satellite Titanium ASC1 Positioner Troubleshooting

[Titanium]

Thanks everyone for providing excellent troubleshooting suggestions! Had a great weekend with a ton of amateur radio contacts (including a SOTA - Summits On The Air).

Agree with KE4EST with the M1/M2 DC voltage test. Let us know the results.

Continue to provide service for the ASC1. If you wish to send it in for testing, please email or call.

 

[bill1]

Thanks everyone for providing excellent troubleshooting suggestions! Had a great weekend with a ton of amateur radio contacts (including a SOTA - Summits On The Air).

Agree with KE4EST with the M1/M2 DC voltage test. Let us know the results.

Continue to provide service for the ASC1. If you wish to send it in for testing, please email or call.

Thanks, Brian. I agree those were great troubleshooting suggestions. KE4EST is correct. My auto ranging multimeter is too slow to see the voltage. I have figured out what the problem is. Seems I have an intermittent short in one of the motor wires. Best I can figure is that it is occurring at the point where the cable flexes when the dish moves. I ran a temporary new motor wire to replace the shorted one and the ASC1 now is working fine.

Would it be possible to send my original unit or mainboard in for repair? It stopped powering up after a bad storm where I lost both LNB's, HDMI ports on the sat receiver as well as the TV. Must have came in thru the coax. First and only time in better than 25+ yrs that I've ever suffered any damage during a storm. The dish is bonded to house ground but mother nature won out. Curiously when powered up the display does not light up but it has 36V on M1 and M2 to ground so I assume the transformer, etc is fine. Just damaged the mainboard from what I can tell. It would be great to have a spare in case that ever happens again.

Thanks again everyone for the help!!

 

[Titanium]

If a lightning strike, best to send in the main PCB plus the faceplate and f-con PCB from rear panel. Basically, sent in all electronics minus the transformer.

I am hesitant to do single component replacements on lightning damaged electronics as other components may have been weakened by the event and prematurely fail when placed back into service.

 

[arlo]

If a lightning strike, best to send in the main PCB plus the faceplate and f-con PCB from rear panel. Basically, sent in all electronics minus the transformer.

I am hesitant to do single component replacements on lightning damaged electronics as other components may have been weakened by the event and prematurely fail when placed back into service.

Sounds like time to get the Arduino out and write up some burn in/exercise code! hah
And Someone suggested to bring the motor inside and run it to negate cabling issues. Hmmm.
Any schematics for this beast?

 

[bill1]

If a lightning strike, best to send in the main PCB plus the faceplate and f-con PCB from rear panel. Basically, sent in all electronics minus the transformer.

I am hesitant to do single component replacements on lightning damaged electronics as other components may have been weakened by the event and prematurely fail when placed back into service.

Thanks, Brian. I sent an email to your support address.

 

[Titanium]

Understand from the op's email that the distribution wiring was found to be intermittent and the ASC1 now works fine with the temporary run. The op will be working with us to repair the original unit that was damaged by lightning.

 

[lme]

Yes.

Also yes.

Do you have any sort of momentary push button switch and some spare wire?
Disconnect the unit from the dish completely( not wiring to dish motor or sensor).
Put the switch across the sensor terminals. This takes a little coordination, but start with one hand(finger) tapping the switch. Then with other had try to move East or West? Does it error out? or think it is moving? Better yet clip your meter across the M1 and M2 terminal. One direction should show approx. +36 Volts and the other direction should show -36V. You got to keep a steady tapping rhythm or it will error out on a good unit. But it don't have to be perfect, as long as you are relatively fast. If the unit does not error out that will rule out the ASC1.

Are you using sheilded cable going out to your dish? If not try putting oh maybe a 250-500pF capacitor across S1 and S2 and put a 0.1µF cap across the motor leads and maybe one of each to ground from the motor terminals. This will cut down on motor noise that may be getting induced onto your sensor wire.

I know it's an old post, but I just noticed that the user manual says 0.01mF !!! not 0.1mF !
"If you are experiencing counting errors, these often are caused by the type of wiring,grounding / shielding and excessive motor noise. If when moving from point A to pointB, the motor stops short of the programmed position, the sensor circuit is receiving toomany counts. This indicates that noise is entering the sensor circuit. Here are a fewsuggestions to correct common noise issues.• Connect a .01 µF, 50 volt (minimum rated / approximate value) capacitorbetween the M1 and M2 wires at the actuator motor. The capacitor minimizesthe motor RF noise from interfering with the sensor and servo control circuits."
So what is the real value of the capacitor ?
Thx.

 

[Titanium]

Good catch! The manual was last updated over 10 years ago and no one noted this typo.
0.1 µF, 50 volt would be a good starting value.