Newbie having large problems......looking for some assistance.

Hi Guys,

Ive been doing a bunch of reading, and thread searching lately, but ill admit, im having a few problems getting my head around things here. CCcam, providers, cannels, etc.......i think im starting to confuse myself.

So, im going to throw my story out there, and hopefully someone with a few minutes to spare can point me in the right direction. Im pretty sure once i get a bit of a kick start, ill be good to wind up by myself.

Right then........about a week ago, i purchased a Dreambox 800HD se (clone) machine. When i plugged it in, it appeared to already be pretty much setup for the Optus C1 satellite in Australia. In addition to that I popped down to my local satellite shop, and bought a dish, an LNB, and all the mounting bits and pieces.

A buddy at work has a "satlink" device, which helps dial in the satellite dishes (pretty cool toy) so i also borrowed that.

I set the dish up on the roof, and using the satlink tool, aligned it to the Optus C1 satellite. My mate at work told me to just use all the factory settings when selecting the Optusc1 satellite. I believe the frequency was 12305. The signal i was getting was pretty weak but i seemed to have at least something.

I dropped a coax cabled off the roof and into the loungeroom, ssh'd onto the dreambox and put a few lines in the CCam.cfg file i had recevied from my work mate, and believe it or not, things started working!. I could see channels, and i got a picture.......cool!.

This is where things started to go downhill. Even though I had a picture, it kept freezing, which i put down to the fact that i had poor signal (about 15% quality i think). So i called up a local guy, who came around and for $40 aligned the dish for me. He said I had been trying to align it using the wrong frequency (in the satlink TP1 - 12305). He changed the device to TP3 (11886) and everything on the signal meter seemed to come alive. Signal great and quality great. He also had a much more sophisticated machine that he used to check the alignment as well (it had all sorts of graphs and meters and dials). So, i suppose im assuming the satellite alignment is correct.

Now, whilst I had been playing around with the Dreambox myself (as i was determining why my picture kept freezing), I must have done something to the operating system on it, because i seemed to loose all pictures, all channels etc. Not to worry, work mate to the rescue, comes in and installs a new image.

The current system is:

ramiMAHER-sim2
Image: Newnigma2 v3.3.2 2012-03-28
Frontprocessor version: 1
Detected NIMs: "blank"
Tuner A: BCM4505 (DVB-S2)

However i was still experiencing problems. I set the tuner configuration to the following (Most of these were default):

Configuration Mode: Advanced
Satellite: Optus C1/D3 (156.0E)
LNB: LNB1
Priority: Auto
LOF: User Defined
LOF/L: 09750
LOF/H: 10600
Threshold: 11700
Voltage mode: Polarization
Increased Voltage: no
Tone mode: Band
DiSEqC mode: none

Didnt fix the problem. If i got into Satfinder, i seem to get fairly sporadic results. By default the frequency in Satfinder is set to 11836, and the SR at 27500. If i change the frequency to 11886 (what the guy told me he aligned it to) I loose all SNR and AGC, and end up with the signal bars jumping all over the place. If i change the 11886 back to 11836 it makes no difference. If i then exit out of satfinder (and select no to zap back) and go back in (meaning the default 11836 value is again displayed), i get my signal back. If i select "yes" to zap back, and then go back in............i have crappy signal again. If i reboot the box, the signal seems to settle at SNR 80%, AGC 30-40% and a satellite lock (with 12.9DB)

Sometimes it shows SNR around 88%, with AGC around 35% and a satellite lock. Other times it shows both bars jumping around all over the place with no satellite lock. This can change as i simply move around the menus. IE: It will change in behaviour even if i dont make any changes to the tuner confguration. As i sit here looking at it right now, i actually have SNR 0%, AGC 0% BER 0 and no satellite lock).

If i do a channel scan, I only get 15 channels, and they are always the same ones. They seem to pop up as the scan is scanning frequency 12598, and the channels are: A-PAC, AURORA, BBC Knowledge, DAL 1, DAL 2, DAL 3, DAL 4, DAL M, HITS, Lifestyle Home, *** Business, *** News.

If i try to view any of these channels, I get varying results. Sometimes it comes up saying invalid tuner configuration, other times it comes up as if its going to show me a picture (IE no error) but then just sits there with a black screen.

So, the issue obviously has to be in one of the following;

1) The configuration of the operating system.
2) A dodgy alignment of the dish (i dont know enough about to know if the guy who came around was spinning me a yarn)
3) Faulty Dreambox (or component within it)
4) Dodgy / Faultly coax cable from Dish to Dreambox (contribting to the unstable signal results).

What seems wierd to me is that it worked (albeit with a constantly freezing image) very early on in the piece, but now doesnt seem to work at all. It seems the more i muck around, the worse it gets, and i dont know if its because im just a dunce!.........or if there is something wrong with the hardware.

Guys im pulling my hair out here, and id really appreciate if one of you might be able to lend me a hand to get this going.

Thanks very much in advance

Dave

Hi guys,

Just an additional bit of info that ight help narrow it down.

I have just spent a few hours checking the cabling, along with a visual inspection of the dish (i had to give the satlink device back to my buddy yesterday).

So, what seems to happen consistently is, if i reboot the dreambox, and without doing any channel searches at all (IE no automatic channel searches etc) go straight into the Satfinder, i get a SNR of 90% (i improved the cabling a by chooping out about 10 meters of useless length), and a AGC of 40%, and a DB of 14.50~. I can go in and out of this menu and these figures will vary only very very slightly. Seems quite stable.

As SOON as i try to do a channel search, it still comes back ONLY with the abovementioned list of channels. At this point if i go back into the satfinder, the signal is completely messed up. AGC is about 83%, SNR is 0%, there is no lock, and DB is 0.00.

So it seems that as soon as i do anything relating to scanning channels, it seems to mess with the signal for some reason.

So, I dont know if this is because of poor system configuration, poor dish alignment (dont think its this one), or something faulty inside the dreambox.

Again, im throwing it out there to anyone that may be able to point me in the right direction.

Many thanks.

Dave

Quote from cazuela

Not really sure about the dm800 , tell you what though ,try updating the channel settings list ask your mate for his) see if it helps.
If this doesnt work, bring your box around to your mates and stick it in there....see if this works..
using the FTP ,for example DCC programme, ¿ have you got the right IP ,etc to connect the CCcam to an external via Cline ,etc ??
¿ Have you read the stickys here ? Forum Gateway - Powered by DnP Firewall
this is what comes to mind first ..
let us know how you get on ;)

Thanks very much for the reply cazuela. Im pretty sure the networking side of things is setup OK. I work with linux and networking / router as a profession, so im quite comfortable that all is OK there. I cant tcpdump on my unix router, and see successfull packets going out, and coming back in from the host in the N line.

I can successfully open the web interface of the device, so i believe the networking / routing side of things is setup OK.

Also as mentioned, previously i did get an image. It only seems to be after i started tinkering with the settings on the dreambox (and got the dish professionally aligned) that things started going skewif........in that time the routing / networking hasnt changed.

This is quite frustrating!.

Dave