[Trilithic 860DSP] Box to Tap in 20 mins.

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I put this together for my area the other day. The 860's are coming in fast and furious finally. Its getting harder to train the guys as they are given them.

-Building a channel plan

   The following steps will set up the 860DSP for basic functions. Signal LEVEL -analog and digital, TILT, SPECTRUM ( ingress) and CM STATS- (Upsteam/Downstream )

    -Power up your 860 DSP. Right out of the box your DSP will have enough power reserve to set up for use without having to place it on the charger.

Build a channel plan.
Hook your 860DSP up to active plant.

   At the Navigation Screen press the third yellow softkey under the tab marked “SETUP”
This will take you into the 860s general setup/configuration screen.

Navigate through this and all menus using solely the arrow right and left keys. Once on a selection you will THEN use the arrow up and down to scroll through options for that selection

Once the yellow softkey is pressed the SETUP menu should be highlighted in the new screen. Press the ENTER button to access. 

You will be presented with a menu of all configurable options. LEFT ARROW 3 times until the LEARN CHANNEL PLAN option is highlighted. Press   again.

Scroll using the DOWN ARROW until ncta.base is shown.
RIGHT ARROW down to Stop Frequency and press .
Change the frequency to at least 760,860mHz depending on your plant type ( type 760, press   ) to ensure all available channels are searched.

ARROW RIGHT once and LEARNED PLAN NAME will be highlighted. Press   and type in a name for the new channel plan. ( ex. MyPlan ) Press 

Now press the second yellow softkey under the “LEARN” tab. Your 860 will learn your plan in approx 15 secs.

Press the Red BK button(   ) on the DSP keypad. You will be prompted to SAVE your new channel plan. Press  to save.
You will be back on your SETUP MENU screen. Proceed to the next step.

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-Editing the Channel Plan.

This is an extremely important step in making efficient use of your 860DSP for digital signal reading and aiding in a speedier diagnosis of signal and noise related issues.

While on the SETUP MENU screen LEARN CHANNEL PLAN is probably highlighted. ARROW RIGHT one time until EDIT CHANNEL PLAN is highlighted. Press ENT.

You are now presented with a screen displaying the variables for channel 2 most likely. Press the far right yellow softkey under the MORE tab. Press until the two TABS next to MORE state “LOAD” and “SAVE”
Press the second yellow softkey under LOAD and you will see your saved channel plan among a few default plans. ARROW DOWN to select your saved plan and press ENT.

With channel “2” in the top field arrow right 8 times until TILT-No is highlighted. Arrow down once to switch to TILT-YES.
ARROW RIGHT 4 times until you are back on the channel field. Enter 36, press ENT and repeat the steps to select TILT-Yes. Do the same for channel 70.

You have just set up the TILT function for 3 analog channels covering your low, mid and highband.  Now for the digital channels.

-Editing Digital Channels.
Now we will edit a few digital channels. The channels outlined can be substituted with any channels you feel will serve your troubleshooting better. These channels were selected to represent a cross section of our digital offerings. The selected channels will all be added using the same previous steps with some additions.

Having digital channels defined will help you imeasurably in the field. Below are listed an areas channel number. Each channel number represents a frequency. Each frequency represents an advanced service.
If you do not have a frequncy allocation chart handy, grab your digital remote and look to the inband status to tell you the freq of any given channel.
ADS- ADS channels digitaly simulcasted grouped 8 or 12 per frequency spanning 5 or more frequencies. Pick one from your freq sheet and set it as below.

HITS- Hits represnt packages of channels much like the ADS lineup. Each freq represents 10 oe more digital channels such as HBO/Noggin/ any digital tier channel.

VOD- VOD is really nothing more then frequencies. You cannot find them with the digital box and will need the freq sheet to define them.

HSI- Internet downstream.

HD- HD channels. Most areas have no more then 2 HD channels pre freq.
Below is an example of an area-

83	ADS POD3	An ADS pod containing 10 digital simulcast channels.
89	VOD	One of 5 VOD frequencies.
100	HITS 4	HITS package containing 11 digital channels.
109	HSI	CHSI downstream carrier. ( 705.00MhZ )
114	HD HBO/SHOW	An HD frequency currently carrying HBO and SHOW HD.

In the Channel field type “83” press ENT.
-Arrow to CHANNEL NAME, press ENT. Type in “ADS POD3” press ENT.
-Arrow to CHANNEL TYPE, ARROW DOWN to select DIGITAL.
-Arrow to CHANNEL DETAILS, ARROW DOWN to 256 QAM-ANNEX B.
-Arrow to TILT again. ARROW DOWN once to select YES.
-Arrow to QAM, ARROW DOWN once to select YES.
-Arrow to BER, ARROW DOWN once to select YES.

Now arrow back to the CHANNEL NUMBER field and repeat for the 4 remaining channels. Don’t forget to add in their Channel name, this is KEY later.
What you have now is a cross section of digital channels representing your advanced services. You can check your QAM feature and scroll through HD, HSI, ADS, VOD etc. It will give you the Signal Level, MER and BER of each of those sets.
Since we selected TILT-YES for all above, your tilt function will show you all channels and their signal levels. Great info all on one screen.

-Check what you have configured next…..

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-Tilt and QAM
   Those few parameters changed in the previous posts have enabled two features that will be used at every job.
Now while still in the CHANNEL PLAN EDIT screen press the Bk  button 3 times.  When doing so a screen will pop up asking if you would like to save the changes to your channel plan. Press ENT.

   While still hooked up to plant ARROW RIGHT in the main navigation menu to TILT. Press ENT.

While in TILT mode you will only want to change one option to ease use.
Press the RED Fn Button under the keypad number “9”
A new menu will pop up, press “6” or scroll to “CHANGE DISPLAY MODE” and press ENT.
You will now see your TILT channels that we previously selected when editing the new channel plan. This is a handy and efficient snapshot of selected points throughout our systems entire Spectrum of channels and offerings. Analog, Digital, VOD, HD and CHSI signal levels all on one page.

Press the BK button once to return to the NAVIGATION SCREEN and ARROW LEFT twice to QAM. Press ENT.
 
You will see one of the Digital Channels we selected and edited being displayed. On this screen you can see the signal strength, MER and BER for that Digital Channel. Next to the channel number will be the NAME we gave it. ( VOD, HITS, HD HBSHW, CHSI, etc)
While the Channel number is highlighted simply ARROW UP to scroll through the digital channels we have added.

Tweak-
While in QAM you will view BER in its default mode, real time. To get a more accurate and averaged view, enter the SETUP menu again using the yellow SETUP softkey at the bottom of the navigation menu. Press ENT while on SETUP.
-ARROW to “DIGITAL”
While in DIGITAL-
-ARROW to “QAM DEMODULATION”
While QAM DEMOD is highlighted-
-ARROW DOWN to “SOFTWARE (DSP)”
Press Bk ( back ) red button to exit.
Your DSP is now using its on board software to average your BER readings for a more accurate display.

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-Spectrum Mode ( ingress test )

   Setting up the Spectrum Mode ( ingress test ) involves changing a few parameters that should be familiar if you have ever set up the Acterna 1450/1750 for the Ingress Test.

From the NAVIGATION MENU arrow to option “3”, SPECTRUM.

The very first parameter will be highlighted- “ref” Change this to “0” using the ARROW DOWN key.
-Arrow to Avg, Arrow up to “16”
-Arrow to Lim, Arrow down to “-25”
-Arrow to Db/div and Arrow up to “10”
-Arrow once right-
You have now set the display and limits so they more closely resemble the 1450/1750 Ingress test screen. Your top row should appear as below-

Ref= 0  Avg 16   RBW 300kHz   Lim= -25   10dB/div

Set START AND STOP freqs.
You should now have “Start” highlighted. If it states “Center” instead of “Start”, press the yellow softkey under TUNING and select #2 for “START AND STOP”
Press ENT and input “5”, press ENT ( to set START freq )
-Arrow right, Press ENT and input “760”,( or 860 depending on plant) Press ENT  ( to set STOP freq )( see edit below for reasons)
You’ve just set your start and stop frequency.

-Now arrow right again and you will be on MARKER A.
Input “5”, press ENT
-Arrow right once and you will highlight MARKER B.
Input “42”, press ENT

Set MARKERS
You will notice the left hand side of your ingress graph will have a vertical line. Your Markers A and B are Vertical Lines used to pinpoint frequencies on your graph. You can change them as you need them when trying to pin point an exact freq on the graph. They are currently set up now to isolate the return path freqs from the forward freqs. The return path freqs being everything left of the vertical line.

If you are still connected to active plant remove the jumper from plant to view an accurate ingress test to ensure the settings suit what you are used to. Touch your jumpers Center Conductor to something metallic to cause ingress to again ensure all settings are working as you would like.

EDIT-
** In my experience for a service tech doing a full spectrum ingress scan will yeild more useful info then an isolatd 5-42 reverse ingress scan. With UHF and VHF bleeding into lines it doesnt make sense to limit your visibility to only the reverse. Reverse ingress issues are in the minority when it comes to premise issues. If you area determins 5-42 with no deviation I would recommend trying it yourself with a full spectrum to see if it helps you out more.
For Maintenance youll obviously be more concerned with reverse ingress knocking out your node. But due to forward sweep capabilities, more maintenance depts are using the DSAM and service the 860DSP.

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nice instructions 

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I just got my 860 last week when my op center got its first shipment of 8.  I had about 5 hours of training on it with a rep from trilithic, and the posts here literally covered almost half of what we did in 5 hours.  They are amazing meters though compared to the DSAM.

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Thanks codee! It can definately do more especialy if you can get corp to purchase more options. This tut is to get it ready to do the bulk of the owrk you will need it for.

Its great that you got the actual Reps to go over it with you. When we got ours the reps went over things with the sups. It was more of a sales meeting however.
"You currently didnt pick up this option.. however if you did you could perform THIS function!!"

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Ok basically my sup got 1 of these Trilithic DSPs in and gave it to me to play with for a week or so. We have not had class on them yet. So the above info was great, now im curious how to check retur with this. With my CM-500 i had a voip test that would then give me a summary of Tx lvl along with MER, and pre or post BER aswell as Rx. Anything like that on these? I can get it to sync through the voip test..and it does give me  Tx number for a second. But then moves on to some other portion of the test that i dont think i have setup correctly yet.

Thanks for any advice anyone has..interesting trying to work with a meter with no instruction at all cept what you find on your own..thank god for this place 

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your looking for CM STAT should be #5 by default....also the far right softkey will bring up and option to view your levels in the trace rt, ping, and voip test.

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Aslo if they put their mac on a house account you can go to Yellow Soft Key "Utility" then "CM-THRU" and you can use the 860 as a regular modem. Great for troublehsooting customer owned modems and our modems before you swap em.
Just hook the computer RJ45 to it and BAM your online through your modem.

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Thanks for the info... I've had an 860 DSPi for awhile and received no training on it at all... I like it much more now that I have set up QAM Lite...very helpful.