RB433AH with dual XR5's - Intermittent Shut Downs

shrick · January 26, 2009, 12:02pm

Hi There

I have 2 x RB433AH’s with dual XR5’s in each, 20m up a tower. It runs from battery/solar power. I monitor the battery voltage daily and thats always stable. The lowest voltage I get is 12.4V during night time. The power cable going up the tower is 2mm twin core cable, one for each router board.

The problem: Every x-days (random) I have a total shutdown on the tower. Thus, the routers does not start up again. They just shut down and stays dead!? Every time it costs me to drive up the mountain, taking off a battery terminal and putting it back on again. Then all is dead stable for the next y-days, until the next shut down occurs.

Its not lightning…

I’ve already tried running it on a 24V system - same problem.

I’ve also gone so far as to fit a 35V 10000uF capacitor on each board - still same problem.

I was wondering if it’s not maybe the RB433AH’s thats just not capable of supplying enough power to the XR5’s? Do I need RB600?! Heavy expensive.

Any ideas. This thing is really starting to make me tired.

Thx

shrick · January 30, 2009, 12:35pm

Anybody?

tgrand · January 30, 2009, 5:49pm

Are you sure you are at the current firmware?

/sys rout pr
From the terminal this will show you the current bios level.

/sys rout upgra
This will upgrade the router if the newer version is higher than the current version.

wolverine · January 31, 2009, 12:50am

How are the cables powering the unit?

If it is at all possible, check using a multimeter to see what your voltage drop is at the radio. I had a similar problem where the board would reboot, upon further investingation found that the supplied power input was to low to power the units.

Hope this helps.

MyThoughts · January 31, 2009, 2:37am

I can assure you that RB433AH works just fine with 2 x XR5’s.
I always power my RB433AH’s with 24V x 2A PoE injectors.

Of note I also run many RB433’s with 2 x XR5’s with 24V x 0.8A.

Cheers

shrick · February 16, 2009, 1:10pm

Thanks for the replies. Appreciated. I’m currently running the power from the solar panel regulator, not directly from the battery and it seems to be more stable…?! Will check it out for a few more weeks.