Going to update this conversation. For the past 2 months, we have been testing two different snow solutions from Cambium. One is a POE powered heater for the 40.5 dBi antenna and the other is a cover for the 44.5 dBi radio. We have had a couple large snow storms since putting both of these solutions in place. Since it was late winter / spring, the storms were wet heavy snow. We have not tested either solution in cold dry snow but my expectation is the covers should work better in dryer (non-sticky) snow.
The heated reflector was also coated in Never Wet to help as much as possible. Our first snow storm was a 6 hour event with heavy snow for most of that time. This is the kind of storm where we would have lost most of our 60 Ghz links. We lost a couple v1000 links (first time for those) for a bit, lost one of the heated v3000s for a short while but did not loose a single ping on the dishes with the covers and there were some long links.
One is a v3000 to v5000 at 660 meters and it went down in minimal snow in the past - stayed up the entire storm after covering the v3000.
Another link is a v3000 to v3000 at 1030 meters and we would lose it in big storms. It stayed up this entire storm.
The heated reflector requires the smaller version because POE does not have enough power to heat the larger dish. This lost us a little signal but the heater did not really keep up anyway. We may put these on shorter links just because we have them but I did not see an appreciable difference in the heated reflector (POE version).
The covers worked great at protecting the dish from snow and ice. These are BETA covers we have. They are not the final color or design but Cambium wanted to test some options. I can’t tell you how they will hold up after a summer of UV but I am told they are made with materials used as sunshades so it has been tested. We’ll see. They are light weight and easy to apply. On a side note, we had some 100+ mph winds after putting the covers on. No wind loading issues and no damaged covers.
So, Cambium has heard us and is actively testing solutions both at their sites and with some customers in snowy climates. A couple other ISPs are also testing covers similar to ours and may chime in here but we were happy with the results. I can sleep better during snowy nights now.
This is a good short term “fix”, but is a stupid long term solution. This product needs to be redesigned, IMHO. There are many other 60GHz products on the market right now that do not suffer from this snow issue.
Why not just rotate the dish 180 degrees??? There’s literally no reason for it to be in the snow shape. Just redesign the way the feedhorn attaches.
It’s been clear for some time Cambium is no longer listen to their customers.
Switch design, cnPilot design, this product, the 3000 CPEs… I really wish they would. But they aren’t. And the company is too large to really even know who to have a conversation with this about at this point.
I would like to thank you all for your comments, we do listen and we have been working with a number of customers to get useful feedback and results for a solution.
Rotating the dish is not an option, there’s not only external limitations but internal and regulatory issues which will not allow this, we did consider all this many years ago when it was designed.
If you have deployed this and are having issue, please contact us, raise a ticket and let us listen to you and then help.
This isn’t really fair. I doubt you know what goes into engineering a product for long term use and the amount of effort and work and money it takes to deliver such a thing to market.
To throw out blanket statements like “cambium doesn’t listen” is downright libel. You honestly think if the solution was as easy as “Rotate the antenna” they would have done that years ago.
I’m very aware of what goes into engineering a product – and that’s exactly why end-users (many of them) need to be involved in the design of the product before it goes to production.
There are numerous issues I’ve been tracking with Cambium for years now without a resolution and where the end result is not at all what people wanted. I also have it on good authority from one of the product teams that upper management’s idea of the product type that gets released is very different from the engineer’s ideas of what product gets released – and when it boils down to it, what management is releasing is really not what end users want.
I don’t possibly see how the dish with the scoop on the top instead of the bottom causes a regulatory issue… but anyway… why not just have a full dish instead of only a partial?
Here’s the point though – this product never should have made it to market in its current form. Unfortunately I’m seeing QC seeming to slip severely on multiple Cambium products and software development. Things that make it out the door that just make you go “huh? how did that ever leave the lab”.
Your users are your assets. Your users use your product. Engage them when the product is in the design stage so things like this don’t get out the production door without a solution.
Your users should never be coming back to you saying “your product doesn’t work in the snow…” that just shows a lack of understand of where and how your users will be using your products.
Examples of where Cambium did not engage end-users or seems to be severely lacking in QC:
Passive voltage on the cnMatrix switches. It should be true passive, it’s not. Any end-user who was going to use it would have told you this.
Another example if the massive side mount on the 3000 CPE. End users would have told you this should have been centered rather than on the side and that the U Bolt was way too big.
The 3000 GPS and Ethernet port issues are another thing I can think of.
The current cnPilot software that essentially bricks the cnPilot Rxxx routers with no resolution being provided yet.
450 SMs that have the DNS Proxy daemon crash/become unresponsive and so result in the end-user not having internet access.
I’m sure there are others, but this is all I can think of in a span of a few minutes.
These things shouldn’t be appearing once the product is in mass production in the market. They should be being designed better and/or caught in quality control.
I am perplexed as to the regulatory issues of rotating the reflector 180 degrees?
The regualtory bodies look at a lot for these things but the orientation of the reflector is not one. The gain and angle of departure are items that must be known but there is nothing that I have found in any documentation for regulatory requirements for direction of the reflector to the feed assembly.
I do understand the choice of reflector as this is akin to the AT&T long lines reflected horn antennas, this design has a very low signal path spread (the best parabolic design has a 1.5 degree spread, where the long lings antennas had 0.5 degree), but failure to predict natural incursion to the surface when that choice of orientation was explored should have been a red flag somewhere.
At this point we have actively chosen to not deploy this series of radios simply because it starts snowing in september and doesnt stop until the end of april. This would mean for 7 months of the year we would have nothing but trouble tickets to go clean of these scoops!
If Camabium cannot rotate the device by a certain number of degrees due to regulatory rules in the USA, then Mikrotik could never sell any device in the USA. Cambium does not listen to end customers and it should.
I found a catastrophic hardware failure in the Force 300 CSM and I think the AP 3000 L has the same problems.
As such, they should not sell a single piece in the USA and the EU
(I don’t know about the rest of the world) because it doesn’t meet the regulatory and safety rules.
Unfortunately they didn’t even answer, they didn’t contact me, they said bravo or please, we did shit, don’t raise a storm.
As much as the snacks fail, they could simply announce that the V3000 is not intended for the part of the world where it snows, that it ended up in the distribution network in those parts of the world by mistake, that the V3030 is coming out (only for snow).
You release a new series and make a smooth transition
Greeting
If it prevents Ice and Snow build up and keeps my links alive, it’s exactly what we need. Did we abandon the fabric version? I kind of like the idea that the wind will shake the fabric and throw the water/ice off the radome. Hopefully the hard one sheds the water otherwise freezing rain will still be an issue.
It has only recently been made available for distributors to order, and should start first shipments in late September. It will take a little time to filter through the channel.
I assume yes there will be a model for the 40.5 dBi antenna, but initially Cambium are only launching with the Radome for the the 44.5 dBi antenna.
@Kyle_Stone we only intend to provide the larger dish with Radome at the moment. For the best availability we would recommend the larger dish with the radome.
