I am wondering how other companies do Site Surveys.
For the 2.4GHz surveys we carry a SM and dish up to the roof with a battery pack and then call our office to get the signal.
What’s everyone else doing for checking signals that aren’t necessarily LOS.
Thanks
Tim S
frmr96 wrote: I am wondering how other companies do Site Surveys.
For the 2.4GHz surveys we carry a SM and dish up to the roof with a battery pack and then call our office to get the signal.
What's everyone else doing for checking signals that aren't necessarily LOS.
Thanks
Tim S
we like to use a small laptop or PDA to do on-site tuning. Also, we run the customer's address through topo software (delorme topo 4 or 5) prior to truck roll to check for hills in the way. For more complicated links we use RadioMobile Deluxe to check fresnel zones and signal level prediction.
what kind of battery rig are you using?
we found that 12 volts is plenty to run a canopy radio, so we use a small battery from a UPS with 2 ethenet ports attached right to it. You can crimp a RJ45 jack to a small 12-volt ac/dc converter for easy charging.
Newer canopy firmware has special pages for PDA's that display RSSI and jitter in big numbers, so they're easy to see (http://x.x.x.x/pda.html)
it's also handy to have a small (and light) telescoping pole with a collapsable tripod to get a little higher up.
i really like surveys when you get signal sitting on the ground :-)
Ever since we started using 900 products, we stopped doing site surveys. We can pretty much tell of the area whether or not we will get a signal. Now that the trees have their full leave content, I have had to switch out a few 900 SM’s with a higher gain Yagi antenna to stabilize the link and keep the jitter low. I have also had to replace some 5.2 with 2.4, and some 2.4 with 900.
We also have a bp (battery pack) and a few laptops. We DO want to explore the option of either finding a smaller laptop, or using a PDA.
Z
The thing about PDAs and Laptops is that our techs work alone. It’s kind of hard for 1 person to go up the roof with a dish and battery bag to do the survey. I would not want the responsibility to be thrown my shoulders if I was to drop a PDA or a laptop. Or does everyone else work in teams???
Tim
Lift truck with 40’ lift makes surveys really quick and easy. With one person and a laptop or pda surveys are easy with the lift truck.
okconnect,
Thanks for pointing out the /PDA.html add on… I just checked that out and will prob. find a PDA to minimize the amount of equipment I have to carry up on a roof. Sweet feature! Good job Canopy! 
wirelessSolutions wrote: okconnect,
Thanks for pointing out the /PDA.html add on.. I just checked that out and will prob. find a PDA to minimize the amount of equipment I have to carry up on a roof. Sweet feature! Good job Canopy! :)
That's a good feature, but since the units need to be powered anyway, how do I use it? I have the POE device down in the truck plugged into the converter. How do I use a PDA on the roof w/o carryin power to the roof?
We have a 150' Cat5e cable on a garden hose spool. Laptop remains in the vehicle. We are going to get (or make) the alignment tool for the roof.
-m-
Cat5 on a garden hose spool, thats a good idea.
We have a small battery pack that is light and easily rests on the shoulder. Eliminating the laptop is my main priority.
Got to have a laptop or PDA, calling the office is a waste of time, people and minutes, in my opinion. I too have a spool (extension cord type) with about 50’ of CAT-5 so that if i have to test with a telescoping pole i got plenty of cord. I use a 12v battery and laptop on the roof, and do it alone, its no problem, no stringing power on the roof, or having someone in the truck yelling the signal out to me. PDA would be great for those times when you are aligning a dish on a tower, that is about the only time you cannot do it alone since its not a good idea to carry a laptop up a tower.
We found that a backpack designed to hold a laptop works great. We store the laptop and the power supply which is a camping type of power unit, maybe weighs about 10 Lbs. Both laptop and power in backpack is pretty easy.
For the SM and Dish. We purchased a handfull of camera style tripods, modified the mount on the dish to fit the little camera mount that comes with the tripod. Ensure you get the metal tripods (costco is where we got ours) they are light and sturdy at the same time. On the back of the dish we have also mounted a small dual RJ45 port and wired directly to the power port and the sync/defualt port so we dont have to open the base of SM to plug in, and we also do not have cables floating everywhere.
Two cables from the backback, one for the laptop the other for power to the SM. then some red tape to designate where the site survey was performed for the install tech to follow the exact location of site survey.
thats our method, hope this helps.