Quantar Telemetry - Monitoring and Interpretation Program

ASTROMODAT · Post by **ASTROMODAT** » Tue Aug 26, 2003 12:38 pm

For later model Quantars (e.g., stations running software release R10.05, or higher) there is a very powerful standard feature that allows for NASA-like telemetry monitoring of all the important station status and activity (e.g., P/A health and status and its fan On/Off state, p/s health and status and its fan On/Off state, transmitter forward and reflected power, associated VSWR calculation, etc.- the list goes on and on and on!). This monitoring data is real time, as well as stored highs and lows, etc. There are also a slew of minor and critical ALARMs that get real time reported, as necessary, with associated alarm triggers.

The problem is that this data is a bit clumsy, as it comes down with a HEX source field, the status items are presented as bit numbers, and the parameter values are dumped as numbers. Motorola publishes all of the “decoding information,” so it can be interpreted, but it takes a manual look-up to do so (thus my opinion that it is clumsy to deal with).

My question: Does anyone know of any third party software (or, Motorola software, for that matter!) that can put all of this way KEWL information in a nice tabular form, in English? (Yes, I know that a good programmer could hammer this out over a few cans of beer. My question is whether such code has already been developed, and can be purchased as a nice package.)

Larry

Post by Pj » Tue Aug 26, 2003 4:29 pm

Ooooo. That can be fun to play with. I haven't read thru my Quantar book yet, but what book (if any) would that information be in?

ASTROMODAT · Post by **ASTROMODAT** » Tue Aug 26, 2003 4:37 pm

It's in the back of the Quantar Functional manual (pricey at $65), but I understand that the latest version (which mine is an origianl "0" suffix) has additional telemetry information developed since my 1996 manual.

Larry

Post by Pj » Tue Aug 26, 2003 7:17 pm

Ah. Our new (and only at the moment) is vintage March, 2003

I'll have to look when I go back into work.

RKG · Post by **RKG** » Wed Aug 27, 2003 6:51 am

If the goal is to sit in front of a screen and view the diagnostic data, why not simply leave the RSS running under the status report and digital metering screens?

ASTROMODAT · Post by **ASTROMODAT** » Wed Aug 27, 2003 12:55 pm

Doesn't give you nearly as much telemtry data.

Larry

RocketNJ · Post by **RocketNJ** » Thu Aug 28, 2003 3:51 am

I believe the MOSAD system can plug into the RS232 port and monitor alarms and status. I do not know the extent of the data that MOSCAD can provide but MOSCAD is way too expensive for most applications.

George

rastolz · Post by **rastolz** » Mon Dec 20, 2004 4:38 pm

Does anyone know if there is a place on the backplane where you can use a digital I/O to monitor the general alarm state that would set off the Station Fail LED? This would be a little more cost effective. You may not know what is wrong with it until you get there, but you know something is wrong.