Re: [ldm-users] NOAAport upgrade tips

Gilbert,

Thanks for the great tips on this. Haven't gotten mine up and running yet (new dish coming in), but your notes should same me some real headaches.

I do find it odd that such an important feed would be so very sensitive to minor changes. Seems as if NOAA would want a powerhouse of a feed rather than a lower power signal. Since these are most important when conditions are at their least optimal.

At any rate, I thank you in advance of our new install. PLEASE keep the tips coming.

Warmest Regards,
John Austin Basham
Project Director / Senior Meteorologist
The Storm Spotter Project
Fort Worth, Texas


On 8/19/2014 10:26 AM, Gilbert Sebenste wrote:
A few more tips for you on the new NOAAport broadcast...

The new NOAAport feed spec sheet says that the Novra S300N (which is what
the device is shown to be after you upgrade the firmware to revision 11)
should be set to have a polarity of "Horizontal/Right" per the NOAAport
spec sheet. It should, in fact, say "Horizontal/Left". Jami Casamento,
NOAAport engineer, is working on getting that document fixed.

It cannot be stressed enough that you cannot go "cheap" on receiving the new NOAAport feed. This will push the limits of broadcasting on a single
satellite channel. One company I know has a C/N of 18, a signal strength
of 76%, and a VBER of zero with the new feed...and yet, they are getting
an uncorrectable error or two every now and then (about 10 in the last 24
hours not caused by tweaking). The satellite engineer for that company
believes it is due to a jumper cable from the LNB to the ground block
being of lower quality RG-6 cable, instead of RG-11, with heavy
shielding. That will get replaced in a few weeks, but otherwise everything about that company's receiving system, from the LNB to the receiver to the
server, is top-notch. Make sure that dish is pointed correctly, that all
cable is of high quality, and all connections are tight. This broadcast is and will be ruthlessly unforgiving of anything done "on the cheap", or any
errors introduced in the receiver chain to the receiving server.

Gilbert

*******************************************************************************
Gilbert Sebenste ********
(My opinions only!) ****** Staff Meteorologist, Northern Illinois University ****
E-mail: sebenste@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ***
web: http://weather.admin.niu.edu **
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/NIU_Weather                            **
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/niu.weather                           *
*******************************************************************************

On Mon, 18 Aug 2014, Gilbert Sebenste wrote:

Hello everyone,

As you all are aware, as of August 17, the National Weather Service began broadcasting their new NOAAport feed with 60+ Mbps of goodness.
I had to switch over a dish over the weekend and today, and
I ran into a few pitfalls which you should be aware of, and hopefully this
will make your transition go as smoothly as possible.

First, if you are using a Novra S300/S300N, be advised that the latest firmwware update is Version 2, Revision 11 (V2R11). I bet many of you are only running V2R7. So guess what? You get to do a firmware upgrade. The latest one supports APSK, while R7 only supports PSK. While it does seem to work with R7, there might be issues I don't want to deal with since it doesn't support APSK. So, what I would do is upgrade it to firmware version 11. This is best done physically at the device itself using the Novra-supplied GUI, available on their support website; it's a lot easier than using cmcs. If you use cmcs to do it, it will work...but the Novra will reset it's IP address to 192.168.0.1. Yep, that causes a conflict on just about everyone's system, and that's a pain to work around. If you must use CMCS as we did, be advised, and change your server to not use 192.168.0.1 as a gateway for a while until you can change the Novra back to the original IP address you had it set at.

So, before you do that firmware upgrade...

See that save command on the Novra CMCS, or on the GUI? Save the Novra configuration to the disk. It will make it somewhat easier, and then you can reload it after the firmware upgrade is complete. That upgrade wipes out your settings, and since it's been several years since you probably have messed with it, saving at least a few settings might be helpful to you.

Once you have all of that done, now you can change the receiver settings to receive the new NOAAport broadcast.

http://www.nws.noaa.gov/noaaport/document/AWIPS%20Program%20Receiver%20Configuration%20v1.1.pdf

Use the TOP half of the page; ignore the bottom half unless you want to configure a second receiver to get the NOAA Weather Wire Service (NWWS).
Yep, that's being sent across as well, but on a different frequency.
Oh, see the part where it says "polarity: Horizontal/Right?" It should be Horizontal/Left. I need to tell them that needs to be fixed.

Now, go into your ldmd.conf, and make sure you have all of these:

# Entries needed to read and process the DVB-S/DVB-S2 streams.

# dvbs shared memory ingest processes
exec    "dvbs_multicast -n -m 224.0.1.1"
exec    "dvbs_multicast -n -m 224.0.1.2"
exec    "dvbs_multicast -n -m 224.0.1.3"
exec    "dvbs_multicast -n -m 224.0.1.4"
exec    "dvbs_multicast -n -m 224.0.1.5"
exec    "dvbs_multicast -n -m 224.0.1.6"
exec    "dvbs_multicast -n -m 224.0.1.7"
exec    "dvbs_multicast -n -m 224.0.1.8"

# readnoaaport shared memory readers
exec    "readnoaaport -m 224.0.1.1"
exec    "readnoaaport -m 224.0.1.2"
exec    "readnoaaport -m 224.0.1.3"
exec    "readnoaaport -m 224.0.1.4"
exec    "readnoaaport -m 224.0.1.5"
exec    "readnoaaport -m 224.0.1.6"
exec    "readnoaaport -m 224.0.1.7"
exec    "readnoaaport -m 224.0.1.8"

Yep, one for each pid. Now, you're ready to roll! Enjoy the new feed.

Thanks to Ryan Hickman at AllisonHouse for helping me through this!
And I hope this helps you, because if you have a NOAAport earth station with a Novra receiver and don't do this in the next 43 days, it will not be fun to be you.

Thoughts/concerns/comments/typical panic and chaos welcome.

Gilbert

*******************************************************************************
Gilbert Sebenste ********
(My opinions only!) ****** Staff Meteorologist, Northern Illinois University ****
E-mail: sebenste@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ***
web: http://weather.admin.niu.edu **
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/NIU_Weather ** Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/niu.weather * *******************************************************************************



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