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?
its actually the size of the ring terminal itself that keeps up from using a larger ga cable, directly underneath the thump screw is the clip to hold the door on the radio, so we've got to tilt it to the side so it can make it out, any larger than 10ga, its contacting the gps antenna lead
attached is a better picture and my idea for the lug
Chris,
That makes a lot of sense. Thanks for the visual. For the ePMP 2000, the grounding screw was moved to the back of the radio, where you can attach larger gauge cables because you are no longer limited by the tight enclosure in the radio. What are your thoughts on this placement?
Feel free to ignore the salt/fog labeling and that the grounding screw is a little smaller than it is supposed to be.
I would love to see the Cambium Antenna's have an external GPS port in the same area as the RF connections with another at the top of the Antenna where the GPS puck sits.
I understand this would require another cable but I belive it would be worth it.
We are having issues with birds getting to the gps cable the current way it is. I am sure other people are having pest issues also.
This would leave the GPS cable protected.
Also a cover that clips on to protect the cables going to a smart antenna would be great too.
If not for this series it would be a great addition for the AC series.
For pointing I'm using a small tool case with inside one 12v 5Ah battery, one small access point 2,4 Ghz wifi, a passive POE. In this way I can power any ePMP SM device (except 1000 with GPS Sync for AP and 2000) from the base of the tower and with my smartphone connected in wifi to the small access point I can reach the eAlign tool on the web interface.
I also use a magnet on my smartphone cover to attach to the tower building and leave my hands free!
One thing that I would prefer it would be longer screws on Force200 so it could fit on poles of 55/60 mm diameters and more. Actually if we use a pole more than 50 mm of diameter, we need to change screws with longer ones or we can use fixing bracket on the contrary (but then we need to use pipe wrenches to tighten the bracket).
Look at the picture too see what I mean... sorry for my bad English!
Another very bad thing that could be better is, over sector AP antenna (120 or 90 degrees) for ePMP1000 connectorized with GPS Sync as AP, you use stainless screws, those are frequently that after only some months if we need to loosen them, they often seizen up and we need to use a grinding wheel or a saw to cut them otherwise they are blocked!!!
Screw materials of Force200 or ePMP2000 antenna are really better and they won't seizen up so often!!!
Anyway keep doing such a great job!!!
Best regards,
Paolo
Hi Paolo,
Thank you for all of your great feedback and the picture. If the Force 200 had longer screws to fit poles with larger diameters, would that change the installation process for smaller poles?
Do you have any tricks that might help other community members with screws that seize up? An earlier poster mentioned dielectric grease as one way of preventing this issue.
Kindly,
Julia
Thank you all for your posts and feedback. Feel free to continue sharing.
Below is our list of winners. Please send your shipping address to solutions@cambiumnetworks.com and include your shirt size.
ttelford
jydcom
vidyait
ninedd
reighbread
newkirk
mkamel
tboggess
brubble1
Chris_Bay
Chris-T
paolo-pftech
Hi Julia,
can't wait to get the t-shirt! :) Thanks!
Here in Italy we use poles from 40 to 60-70 mm of diameters, so I think Force200 with screws just 2-3 cm longer would be enough. I think in smaller poles that wouldn't be a problem, even because the mounting bracket would be always the same.
About the screws that seize up, the problem occurs only with stainless steel screws like Force110 or Connectorized AP Antennas (those 90 and 120 degrees panel from Cambium). Using screws like Force200 o ePMP2000 that are not stainless steel, they won't seize up, even after 1 year under rain and other weather conditions.
Anyway for preventing stainless steel to seizen up, I've used marine grease with lithium that really rocks and works perfectly even after about 10 months in a tower in mountain!
Hope this may help...
Kindly regards,
Paolo
Julia, since you asked for feedback - good or bad - the following is a repost of what I posted back last fall.
This needs to be fixed.....
Would whoever is in charge of the mechanical design of the Force 110 parabolics change the design of the clamp assembly to the same as the clamp assembly on the Force 200's.
The Force 200 clamp assembly is much easier to install and align at customer's locations than the Force 110
clamp design.
Most importantly, you can actually adjust the azmuth and elevation of the Force 200 parabolic's.
Every time we install a Force 110, we verbally spit out every cuss word in the book trying to get one aligned.
