It is great to hear your protection rules and our equipment are holding up well! Have your weatherproofing rules changed over time? I'm interested to hear how your installation process has changed with experience in the field (or on the tower, in this case).
Julia
Hi Vidyait,
Thank you for sharing your pictures! What is your favorite feature of the Force 200 equipment? Is there anything you wish was different about the equipment?
Kindly,
Julia
What is your favorite feature of the Force 200 equipment? Is there anything you wish was different
I wish I could see the LED's. The LED's are not nearly bright enough. Plus, if we're expected to use the LED's to know when it's linked and as an aid in aiming, then the LED's should be visible from the lower-rear - so that when we're holding an antenna above our heads, we can see the LED's.
I agree with too, but I am using the embedded alignment tools. jyd
Hello Julia
I didn't change anything with my basic rules of waterproofing.
In some cases I use spray of graphite grease too
just try to check evrythings OK times by times, if possible at least once a year.
Read you!
I wish I could see the LED's. The LED's are not nearly bright enough. Plus, if we're expected to use the LED's to know when it's linked and as an aid in aiming, then the LED's should be visible from the lower-rear - so that when we're holding an antenna above our heads, we can see the LED's.
Ninedd,
I appreciate your feedback, especially on features that might not work as well in the field as they do in a controlled environment. How do you work around the LEDs not being bright enough when you are on the tower? Also, are there any other features of the Force 200 or other equipment that are difficult to use when you at the top of the tower holding heavy equipment above your head?
Yes the LEDs are not even usable in bright daylight, much less when on a tower/roof. They wouldn't have to be in a different spot so much as brighter. Maybe a small button that would put them in an install mode and have bright LEDs and maybe even an alignment beep? I do agree that the one size bolt is awesome.
Another feature that I am unsure of how to implement but would be excellent would be a feature that the SMs could be plugged into your network and would auto provision to CNMaestro. I know the APs can, but the SMs require either being manually configured or setting up an ap on defautl settings so that it connects and pulls an IP address that way. The Force200/180 do not pull a DHCP address from their ethernet port and provision that way.
Great work though!
Hi Reighbread,
Thank you for sharing your insights. It is helpful to know that you also have a problem seeing the LEDs during in the bright daylight. How do you currently make sure your equipment is aligned with the dim LEDs? I am guessing other climbers could learn from what you do to make up for the dim LEDs, if you have any special tricks.
Your idea of alignment beeps is great! I wonder if anyone else has ideas of good ways to signify alignment.
For us, we typically have one guy in the bucket of a bucket truck aligning the SM, another guy in the cab of the truck with a laptop (or tablet/phone) calling out dBm numbers until they get it peaked. (all our trucks are fitted with a router with DHCP server over wifi and laptop ethernet on one 'side', all our SM subnets plus defaults on the other feeding into multiple POE injectors)
j
Newkirik,
That really doesn't sound ideal. In a perfect world, how do you imagine alignment going?
you should introduce the WiFi for the ePMP SMs for installation, it would be much easier to accessing it using a smartphone while doing the alignment.
Or create a battery operated POE injector with built in wifi that we can purchase. That way it doesn't drive the per unit price up. I already have something down that line that is cobbled together out of a couple different things but its too bulky most of the time anyway.
@reighbread wrote:Or create a battery operated POE injector with built in wifi that we can purchase.
This topic has actually come up before, three years ago:
http://community.cambiumnetworks.com/t5/Your-Ideas/Rechargable-POE/idi-p/35970#comments
How would your feelings about alignment change with a battery powered POE? Does anyone have any existing products that they can share?
I would like to see a bubble level on the back of the SM's like the other guys use.
Photo: Remote site with ePMP's delivering high speed data to rural Idaho.
"How would your feelings about alignment change with a battery powered POE? Does anyone have any existing products that they can share?"
Right now we are using a Veracity VAD-PSW POINTSOURCE Wireless Battery Power PoE it's 48V DC, IEEE 802.3af/at so we have a 802.3af/at PoE Converter zip tied/taped to the side of it to power the ePMP stuff. For older 5Ghz ePMP and our 900Mhz 450i gear that requires reverse polarity we have a patch cable with the +/- swapped.
It's not perfect and has some quirks (especially when using with 450i or older Canopy) but you can quickly change it from 2.4Ghz wifi to 5Ghz wifi. This means when we are using it to aim 5Ghz gear we change it to 2.4Ghz wifi so there is no chance of interference and the other way around with installing 2.4Ghz ePMP.
With this powering the radio and providing wifi and a magnet on the back of the smartphone the installer can just attach their phone to the force200 dish and have their hands free to aim, hold on the ladder, whatever.
Poinsource PoE: https://www.streakwave.com/itemdesc.asp?ic=VAD-PSW&eq=&Tp=&o1=0
Tycon converter: http://tyconsystems.com/index.php/dc-passive/493-tp-poe-1824
For a while we used the much smaller and cheaper GEVA poe/wifi device . They were nice because they were so small and you just kept them plugged into USB in the truck to keep the charged. However they were, at the time, only 2.4Ghz and really really fragile. We had 3 die in one week (tiny little buttons/switch broke, the usb port receded into the device, plugged one into a radio that turned out to be dead and it also killed the GEVA.
http://www.gevaelettronica.it/shop/index.php?id_product=2&controller=product&id_lang=2 but at the time (maybe they have new models now ?)
Something small like the GEVA and rugged like the poinsource would be ideal, also the ability to change frequencies for installing 2.4 stuff.
Brubble1,
This is great! Thank you for sharing. Seeing your solution, is really helpful because it helps me understand what you are doing in the field to work around the challenges you face with our products.
@brubble1 wrote:"It's not perfect and has some quirks (especially when using with 450i or older Canopy) but you can quickly change it from 2.4Ghz wifi to 5Ghz wifi."
When you work with the 450i or older equipment, do you go back to a wired PoE?
@brubble1 wrote:"With this powering the radio and providing wifi and a magnet on the back of the smartphone the installer can just attach their phone to the force200 dish and have their hands free to aim, hold on the ladder, whatever."
This concept of using a magnet on the back of tools or phones has come up with other tower climbers I have talked to, too. Free hands are always good to have, especially on a tower. What led you to put a magnet on the back of your phone for the first time?
I currently use this battery pack for POE http://www.balticnetworks.com/ideatronik-smart-powerbank-24v-passive-poe.html and was considering getting either this router or just a poe powered mikrotik but then my battery pack would last half as long.
I personally have had bad luck with a magnet on my phone, my battery within a week only had half the life it use to. But maybe that was a freak accident. Maybe I would get a case my phone snaps into that has a magnet on it for tower use only.
I'd love to see the ground lug on the side or front of the gps radios.
we currently ground them to the thumb screw and tilt the ring off to the left through the other knock out next to the GPS but we can only get a 10ga wire in there. I'd like to have a very large ground cable on the directly. if a ground lug was placed so the ground can come straight out of the radio, it would be much easier to deal with, a ground screw seperate from the thump screw and not on the back of the radio would be nice.
the 2000s are accessable enough, the 1000s are a pain to ground on the heatsink, and don't come with a scew for the ground mark. on future radios putting the heatsinks facing away from the sector antennas would probably help with cooling and making large ground contact easier to do.
I would love to see a larger contact on the front of the radios to occomidate a very large ground contact something that cound occomidate .25 - 20 bolt and full contact from a single hole ground lug like these:
http://sitepro1.com/resources/pdf/assembly-drawings/HLx%20-%20One-Hole%20Lugs.pdf
I'm a huge fan of heavy grounding :)
not so easy to see in the attached photo, but the tiny 10ga ground wire headed down to meet the larger ground lug attached to the sector antenna before running back to a bus bar.
Chris,
Thank you for your great feedback. It's always better to be safe than sorry when it comes to grounding. Your picture does make it clear that the small holes for your grounding cables add some extra steps for you. Have you ever tried making the holes bigger? I have heard of people doing this for their tough cables for the ethernet port, which isn't ideal, but it lets you use thicker cabling.
Do other posters have different methods of grounding that reduce the number of steps taken to ground the ePMP radios?
@Chris_Bay wrote:I'd love to see the ground lug on the side or front of the gps radios.
...
a ground screw separate from the thump screw and not on the back of the radio would be nice.
Out of curiosity, why is it better to have the grounding lug on the side or front of the radios instead of the back?
