There are a mix of topics here so I am going to try and organize the responses here.
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First and foremost, GPS issue on the 3000L. Yes, we decided not to add a puck to the box as we felt that the onboard would be sufficient for tracking and locking. On top of that, I forget which firmware but we did have a clear bug that broke our communication between the receiver and our main chip. This caused GPS to be lost. We fixed that in 4.5.6 and later. However, even with a working solution and a puck, there have been reports of intermittent issues on the 3000L. Here is what we have done: 1a. We included a GPS puck in the 3000L as of October. Between inventory in the channel and cutover this takes time to get to your hands but it should be out in the market. This puck was added under two variations. A small batch went out with the same puck we use on the full 3000 but then we shifted to a much better puck with better noise cancellation. In a couple of days, I will post images and specs of all the pucks that are out there. All said and done, a software issue made the GPS problem far worse than other platforms and combined with no puck in the box it has been very challenging for you. We are sorry. However, we do feel we have rectified the situation with a solid puck in the box.
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General observation of GPS receivers/pucks - I haven’t climbed any tower but we suspect location of ePMP APs with onboard GPS chip and LTE interference has been a cause in the past for GPS loss. Additionally, we have seen that once GPS is lost on the receivers, it takes a very strong signal for everything to come back to normal. Sometimes, this doesn’t happen for a long time. Why is the signal lost in the first place, we are not sure at this stage. Our response is to provide a better puck so that the signal is good enough to begin with. In all fairness, using packetflux like devices is the right answer for ePMP2000, 3000.
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ePMP3000 - If you are seeing issues, ask for the new puck please. If you don’t want to use GPS sync, flexible scheduler is coming.
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ePMP2000/3000 - GPS issues. While there are reports such as the one above, in the big picture we have not heard/seen a flood of issues on these products. Very early on, we even had a customer who proved to us how LTE interference can cause the 2000 to lose sync. At this point, in these scenarios if you are seeing the problem, submit a ticket and we will address it.
Long story short, despite the continued comments from some users about how Cambium does not care (you know who you are) or how we are trying to squeeze money out of you etc…etc, we DO CARE. We care about every one of our customers small or big. However, if we jumped on every grievance you post when you are having a bad day and want to take it out on the vendor, we wouldn’t have time to work on real issues. Please submit a ticket. Our support team is trying to help you. Let them ask a few basic questions, if you think you want to bypass that and get straight to the GPS issue, say so. The GPS issue has been a pain. Period. We are trying everything to address it.
Thx
Sakid