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NoMoreGreen
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Mikrotik groove programming.

Sat Apr 02, 2022 12:01 pm

To make a very long story short, I work for a company that regularly deploys mikrotik grooves. We also regularly support the grooves remotely and regularly have them taken out of Boats, Cars, and etc and hooked up via a POE injector and a laptop to adjust settings and configs. More often than not the individuals on the other end of the call rarely have an antenna at their workstations.

Half of my company swears powering on the groove without an antenna will destroy it in less than a minute.

Those of that regularly program these have never had an issue. We often program, have them reinstalled and verify function. We operate under the assumption that because we don’t push data or receive data the radio portion of the groove is not under stress and doesn’t burn out.

Is there an official mikrotik stance on this? I found a post from 2014 on this board about the topic but I did not feel an answer was ever given.

Thanks.
 
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rfc1149
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Re: Mikrotik groove programming.

Sat Apr 02, 2022 3:19 pm

Is there an official mikrotik stance on this? I found a post from 2014 on this board about the topic but I did not feel an answer was ever given.
There's probably no official stance other than what the safety precautions state, otherwise they enter into this murky legal territory with the word that strikes fear into men's hearts: "liability".
However, what happens when a radio powers on without an antenna is that most of the RF energy being produced is reflected back by the port.
From there, one of two things happen:
1) The reflected RF energy dissipates as heat safely; or
2) The reflected RF energy destroys the transceiver.

The reason why I don't go into specifics about the destruction is because it could be multiple possibilities and my reasons are:
1) All silicon is imperfect and no two IC's are physically, structurally identical other than operationally verified during testing
2) The epoxy housing/coating/layer of the transceiver/radio module/SMD components will usually have a specified operational temperature range but;
2a) this may not account for improper operation (i.e. with the antenna disconnected)
2b) this is also imperfect and even though QC aims to minimise this risk, shit happens
3) It is impossible to tell without proper chip teardown and review what really caused it to fail.

So the risk you're taking could be zero or for that one Groove you're working with, it could be on the fringe edge of "absolutely not having this extra RF power reflected mate, I'm committing die".
Manufacturers prefer you keep the antenna connected so that any of those considerations are mitigated in certification, thereby releasing them from liability.
It probably won't cause a problem if the interface is down but as I said, shit happens.

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