SWM 8 Acting Up

[swaptech]

We have a SWM 8 in an appartment building that has been a problem since day one. For starters the building was wired by some guy that didn't know a thing. So here is what we got. Three RG-11 lines up to the roof. Single RG-6 lines ran to each appartment. Three jacks in each appartment. Now here is what we have tried. We ran a temp line from the roof into the comm room, changed every fitting, swapped the LNB, changed the way it was grounded, changed the swm splitters, checked the voltage; and voltage drop were under a 150 ft. We thought that it may have been a brown out issue since the old system was having similar problems. So we put an uninterruptable power source in to see if it was dropping voltage at certain times of the day; since the problem seemed to be occuring at certain times like early in the morning, dinner and evenings. We have done everything except putting a new SWM 8 in which is very exspensive by the way. HELP PLEASE.

[Michael D'Angelo]

You need 4 lines from the dish to the SWM.

[DirecTv Chicago]

We have a SWM 8 in an appartment building that has been a problem since day one. For starters the building was wired by some guy that didn't know a thing. So here is what we got. Three RG-11 lines up to the roof. Single RG-6 lines ran to each appartment. Three jacks in each appartment. Now here is what we have tried. We ran a temp line from the roof into the comm room, changed every fitting, swapped the LNB, changed the way it was grounded, changed the swm splitters, checked the voltage; and voltage drop were under a 150 ft. We thought that it may have been a brown out issue since the old system was having similar problems. So we put an uninterruptable power source in to see if it was dropping voltage at certain times of the day; since the problem seemed to be occuring at certain times like early in the morning, dinner and evenings. We have done everything except putting a new SWM 8 in which is very exspensive by the way. HELP PLEASE.

Expensive as the SWM-8 and Chassies are I would guess that at last 15% of the SMWs which I have installed were bad. Now we could have just received a bad shipment but I have heard alot of other people expierencing some problems such as this.

[dave29]

Expensive as the SWM-8 and Chassies are I would guess that at last 15% of the SMWs which I have installed were bad. Now we could have just received a bad shipment but I have heard alot of other people expierencing some problems such as this.

i have sold over 300 swm's and as far as i know...... everyone of them work:)

[swaptech]

I have 4 running from dish. The only thing we have not tried yet is replacing the SWM switch. Do they warranty these? If so whom do I need to send it too?
I will let you know the outcome. Is it possible we are getting current surges from the power inserter and the AC line it is plugged into? Thanks a bunch

[hdtvfan0001]

I have 4 running from dish. The only thing we have not tried yet is replacing the SWM switch. Do they warranty these? If so whom do I need to send it too?
I will let you know the outcome. Is it possible we are getting current surges from the power inserter and the AC line it is plugged into? Thanks a bunch
My guess is there is another issue coming into play. As Dave indicated above, the failure rate is almost 0...mine has been operational since last year without a problem.

Other candidates...connectors, cables, power source, etc.

I'd be checking all those first.

[Supervolcano]

Ummm, might help if you describe the actual PROBLEM your having.
;)

Also here's some other questions:
How many apartments are you serving?
Why are there 3 lines to each apartment?
How are there only 3 lines going to the roof if there's 4 going to the SWM?
How many TUNERS (not receivers) are you trying to run off this one SWM?

I can think of 50 more questions, but let's start with these.
:D

[swaptech]

We get pixelating than SFS. All Trans read 0's when it does it. It does it at diff times of day and night. sometimes it will not do it for days and somtimes 2 or 3 a day. There is 1 line running to apt unit from comm room. 1 HD in bedroom split to 1 HD in the living room. We have checked all the regular stuff (We are not new to installing. Just new to the SWM). We have checked voltages at recievers, run temp lines, all the experienced technical stuff that we know. Now, let me explain what is going on for the SWM setup. We have 4 lines off Ka/Ku to SWM switch located at dish. Their are 3 RG11 lines to roof from comm room. line 1 feeds the OTA setup. Line 2 feeds old style D* setup that is outdated for HD but not their basic stuff. Line 3 is the one we are using for SWM setup. The run from roof is about 75' max to power inserter in comm room. Line to the apt unit is roughly 30 feet tops. The biggest problem we have for testing volt drop and such is you never know when problem will occur or if it even will that day. We are thinking that the SWM may be bad or possibly the inserter. Could power surges in the buildings electrical be causing a voltage drop from the inserter? We have thought about plugging inserter into a UPS (uninterupted power supply) to see if that works? Is there any way to test the SWM switch itself to see if it is bad before spending $$$ on a new one that may not be the problem? We have checked voltages at all the Equipment and everything checks out. Believe me, we have tried everything we can think of and still having an issue. Any and All help is greatly appreciated and needed at this point. I can reassure you that we have checked, rechecked and temped everything that you would normally check and do on a normal HD setup. Just don't know where to go on the SWM trouble shooting methods. Lines have been temped, cable is passing proper voltage where needed, splitter have been replaced, recievers have proper software. This (I believe) is more complicated than just a simple fix. What do you the about the UPS helping the power inserter? Is it possible we have a volt issue going on or do you think it may be equipment failure?

[Supervolcano]

You know that the maximum number of SWM tuners that can be hooked to one SWM8 module is 8 tuners total, right?

This means like 4 HR20's total.
Or 3 HR20's and 2 H20's.
Or 2 HR20's and 4 H20's.

So question is, how many of what model receivers are you trying to operate with this one module?

When this problem crops up, is it one receiver or all receivers that get affected at the same time?

When the problem crops up, are you POSITIVE it's BOTH TUNERS or possibly just one of the two tuners in a HR20/21 as there might be a firmware issue in the receiver's software and/or possibly a tuner which is going bad (lots of posts in the forum speculate that one or both of these issues are affecting more than a few people).

When the problem crops up, is it possible to have someone run outside and physically look at the dish to see if maybe a bird or some animal is standing on the lnb's or the dish arm, which obviously could affect the signals?

When the problem crops up, does it fix itself after awhile, or are you forced to reboot each of the affected receivers to fix the issue, or does merely unplugging the SWM's PI and replugging it in fix all the receivers?


PS - Sorry I can't help more, but I'm going away for 4 days right now. Hopefully I've stirred some thoughts and the others can assist you after you give some more answers. Good luck. I'll check back on this thread next week.

[carl6]

Your basic setup should be just fine - SWM at dish, RG11 from SWM to comm room, power inserter then RG6 to the apartment.

The RG6 going to the apartment (just one apartment?) is only split once, and that is using a high frequency (5 MHz to 2.5 GHz) splitter? Splitter does not need to pass power unless it is between SWM and PI.

What model receiver/DVR is in the apartment? If it is an H20 then you might have an older SWM firmware version which might be the problem. Best thing to do in that case is get an H21 instead.

As Supervolcano indicated, total tuner count cannot exceed 8.

Carl

[swaptech]

We are only testing this setup in 1 apt unit. He has 2 brand new H21's that have the SWM lettering on the input of the tuner. There are only 2 tuners being used off this setup. We made sure that it had the current firmware installed. We really have tried all the common sense basic stuff. The couple things we have not tried yet is putting a UPS at the power inserter to see if it is a electrical/voltage issue causeing the inserter to drop voltage. after that I can only believe it is a bad SWM. What's everyone take on this so far? Heck, I will even look into the bird on the LNB situation just to get this resolved. I will say this, This problem has sure gotten us up to speed on the install and trouble shooting process of the new SWM's. Please, keep the help coming till we get this one nailed.
Thank You

[dcoelho]

We are only testing this setup in 1 apt unit. He has 2 brand new H21's that have the SWM lettering on the input of the tuner. There are only 2 tuners being used off this setup. We made sure that it had the current firmware installed. We really have tried all the common sense basic stuff. The couple things we have not tried yet is putting a UPS at the power inserter to see if it is a electrical/voltage issue causeing the inserter to drop voltage. after that I can only believe it is a bad SWM. What's everyone take on this so far? Heck, I will even look into the bird on the LNB situation just to get this resolved. I will say this, This problem has sure gotten us up to speed on the install and trouble shooting process of the new SWM's. Please, keep the help coming till we get this one nailed.
Thank You

I had some very strange SWM problems during initial install, spent several weeks trying to work through them. Would lose signals on some HD channels on and off, and tuners would just lose all channels on occasion.

Ultimately, this ended up being two problems in combination: 1) the exterior coax connectors probably had water in them that was causing temperature driven failures and signals loss, and 2) the dish needed tuning...it appeared good enough, but when combined with the previous problem was enough to cause intermittent problems. Once we replaced all the exterior coax junctions and tuned the dish to optimize the signals a bit, things have been absolutely rock solid.

[swaptech]

We have gone through and replaced fittings. We have realigned the dish and have also tuned dish with and without the new SWM software in the birdog. We have replaced the LNB just to be safe. Still having same issue. Next stop, putting a UPS on the power inserter. Will have that done tomarrow 5/20.

[Slowhand]

We have gone through and replaced fittings. We have realigned the dish and have also tuned dish with and without the new SWM software in the birdog. We have replaced the LNB just to be safe. Still having same issue. Next stop, putting a UPS on the power inserter. Will have that done tomarrow 5/20.

Swaptech,

How much time and effort have you spent on this problem? You stated in your first post that the problem was with the SWM. But, you have spent a lot of time and energy checking all the parts but the one most likely is causing all the problems.

I know that you stated that you didn't want to buy another swm because you thought the cost was high. But isn't all the time you have spent on checking all these other parts worth something?

Besides, you have a subscriber that has a problem and it has been close to a week and you still haven't found the problem.

It is a good idea to have spare parts for every part in your systems. Then if you have a failure it can be fixed immediately.

Slowhand

[swaptech]

Luckily enough our customer is an old cable dog, so he has said he has rather enjoyed helping us trouble shoot this thing. He's actually barbequed for us. ( he's one of the good customers) As for swapping out the SWM. We have been trying things 1 at a time rather than trying everything at once and never finding out what the problem actually was. The UPS was installed yesterday and the next stop will be replacing the SWM. I will order 1 today.

[djjolietjake]

The use of the Birdog to peak a 5 LNB dish is the 1st problem. I peaked my 5 lnb dish in 5 minutes with a Super Buddy(well worth the the 67-something expense). The second thing would be the miss-match of cabling from the dish to the the PI-6S. The cabling itself should also be SOLID copper center conductor. COPPER CLAD IS BAD! I believe using a Super Buddy would be your best bet in finding a solution. Good Luck!

[yogi]

How many splitters are you going through ?
Had the same problems with signal to a H21( a two way to a four way).
If you can hook up one cable from the SWM direct to one receiver.
Try that.

[ironwood]

Too bad you dont have different types of receivers to see if receiver is the problem itself. SFSS and zero signal is a known issue of H21s. I've never seen it pixelate though. It is usually just blank screen with SFSS. I wonder if both receivers do same thing at the same time?

[harsh]

It seems like the first order of business would be to test one tuner direct from the LNB assembly. Has this been done?

Are you checking the output of the power inserter when the signal fails? Insuring line power isn't good enough if the PI is failing.

What is the distance between the power inserter and the SWM? Ultimately, I think that mounting the SWM at the antenna is discouraged.

What is the total distance from the SWM to the apartment?

Do you have the appropriate dummy loads installed on the SWM?