MikroTik

In this week three routerboards have been hanged up! Maybe because of -30°

Keep us posted!

We usually get one to three weeks of daily temperatures like that in Maine at the end of January/start of February. I hope mine fare better. Other ISPs in the colder parts of the US have had good reports of RB5xx in cold weather.

~ -25 - no problems with RB5xx and RB2xx

well look at this:
http://wiki.mikrotik.com/wiki/Image:IM000395.JPG

routerboards working, no problem

This is awesome.

seems like mine didn't survived or maybe it was just coensidence.

RB232 with generic CF cards were running OK during -30Celsius un top of 2 40meter towers, but then when became a little bit wormer both CFs lost all data on them.
first gave error message error not mount disk
other just simply reported no software installed

now I have 2 RB with demo keys

If you change cards and problem is gone, could you tell us wich one u use?

Cheers...

In this week three routerboards have been hanged up! Maybe because of -30°

I was discussing this at MUM and I get the impression Mikrotik will be looking into this further...

If you look up the IC's used on the Routerboard eg processor 79RC32H434-266BC
see http://www.idt.com/products/files/57150 ... 434_ds.pdf

You will find that some of the IC's used are rated "Ta Commercial Ambient Operating Temperature 0 +70 °C" what this means is the specification is guaranteed between these temperatures not that at -1degC the IC starts playing up!
Due to manufacturing variability you may find some IC,s still working down to -30degC plus the heat generated inside the IC helps.
The common way of testing finished products is to pop them in the deep freeze (-25degC) the problem is you could have a batch that keep working during your testing stage and -30degC is a bit extreme.
The way Mikrotik have built there boards is quite normal, in fact the build quality is excellent it's just we want them to work at the north pole and the hottest desert and not cost any more )

So how could you get round this problem....
Use product with Ta Industrial Ambient Operating Temperature -40 +85 °C..not a option yet

Add a heater and thermostat in box, if you can get enough power out of POE or run extra cable. I would think the best way is a resistor glued on top of each, of the low power IC's thus minimizing power used and putting it where needed. There are small thermostats (about the size of a 1W resistor) available that cost a couple of Euros.

If the units are not subjected to a high summer temperature a little insulation ether on the IC's (not the processor it will get hot) or around the box, but keep a eye on the temperature!

The processor gives off 1.3 to 1.8 watts, place a small sheet of aluminum touching each of the IC's to transfer some of the heat between them. The metal should touch the IC's as close as possible, have heatsink compound or thermally conductive glue between to help, this could act as a heatsink so may need insulation as well.

Regards Andy

CF cards are original, provided from mikrotik - I dont know who is manufacturer (MT sticker is on top of model and producer label)- mikrotik could tell it better, because they where bought together with RB some 1+ year ago.

one other way, the reason could be low temperature+power disturbance. because second one which reported that no OS is installed worked untill few times rb was restarted using PoE switch off/on

but first CF is 100% cold problem.

we had routerboards testing for many days in the refrigirator (in the freezer, like -20C) and they worked fine. we also used the fan which you use to remove paint - tested up to +70 and it still worked. so and you also seen the pictures with the frozen towers ... mostly it works, maybe it is a humidity issue.

mikrotik CF is PQI. if you really need tough CF, you can try Sandisk Extreme III, maybe it is better

Normis

Where is the place or country of the picture very cold??

Maxi

It must be at the end of the world

actualy it is in italy, on some mountain. a customer gave some of these pictures to me during the MUM

The location is central Italy.
We are usins an alluminium ip67 case with integrated antenna.
We also use some heating system to reduce ice load.

Here some other pictures..




Bye.

Awesome

Location, Prishtina Kosova.

I have some pictures on the beach with sand, girls, routeboard and my notebook. is it not the same?

Maximiliano
Intercity SRL
Rio Cuarto-Argentina
the biggest canopys private implementation of sudamerica

well post those too

The location is central Italy.
We are usins an alluminium ip67 case with integrated antenna.
We also use some heating system to reduce ice load.

Here some other pictures..




Bye. :D

Who took these pictures? Can we get permission to use one in our Dynamic DNS installer? I want to make sure we don't use if copyright is going to be an issue.

Thanks,
Sam Norris
ChangeIP.com

No copyright. You can use free. Can you send a reference where I can find the use?

F.

Here is the screenshot of where we plan on using the image:



This is the first window a user sees when installing our new HomingBeacon software. This is our new version of the dynamic dns client : ) It will be released to the public within a weeks time - we are just completing the installer and few minor last details.

Thx,
Sam

cool (pun intended)

I like it

inside:





outside:
2x PW 28dBi on two ~20km ptp links (one backbone, second for bizness client)



V-line 15dBi sectorized antenna:



and of course me :-)

That is just too D@m cold !!!
Great work!

Gy the way, it is sunny and 74 Deg F. in Phoenix AZ at this moment headed to 80 Deg F. by friday...

Craig

Craig: GO AWAY!
Who wants to sweat when at work?

Best regards,
Christian Meis

jealous huh ?

No, actually waiting for lower temperatures and fresh and more snow again...

Christian

OOPS !!

My mistake... 84 by Sunday..

And that snow will look GREAT come June - October...

Temps can reach 115 Deg F. durring the day and 85 at night...

And the BS about a "DRY HEAT",,, can you say Monsoon !!!

Our issue here isnt the cold as it is the heat baking equipment..

Craig

Craig, I hear ya ... We own a house in Buckeye and its HOT in the summer : )

Sam

Buckeye?

Is this part time or year round...

Craig

Nearly half my RB532 go down at -20.

Those pictures are impressive but usually condions like that only appear at about -5 - -10 C. Any colder and it gets to dry to form ice like that.

Interesting. We haven't seen problems with 532s or 112s at all and its been -34*C so far. We have had (known) problems with SR9 that Ubiquiti is working on, and problems with 153s.

George

hey guys, i dont deal with cold weather here in the south (usa) but woudl it be any use to ADD A LOAD to the RB at all times to make the CPU generate heat CONSTANTLY and thus increase the temp of the board and inside the enclosure?

I.e. my routerboard to a 5 mbit line we have NEVER goes about ~45 cpu usage....i can certinly feel heat emiting from the board when i do large downloads or the cpu is used for a while (duh)...

any comments?

I have 3 RB532a's in operation here in Western Wisconsin and they performed flawlessly with nightly temps ranging from 0c to -20c, and occasinally dipping down to -30c during the coldest times of the winter.

hey guys, i dont deal with cold weather here in the south (usa) but woudl it be any use to ADD A LOAD to the RB at all times to make the CPU generate heat CONSTANTLY and thus increase the temp of the board and inside the enclosure?

any comments?

We just switch cpu-mode from power-save to regular in the fall, and it does the trick.

Same here... We noticed issues when temps dropped below -30 F. We are operating hundreds of nodes in northern Minnesota USA. Boards come preset w/ cpu-setting on power save. We changed our settings to regular and have not seen a cold weather drop out since.

Jay CTO
Genesis Wireless

how do you make this change on the router boards?

from power save to normal that is.

thanks

[admin@Mankie Home] system routerboard settings> print
baud-rate: 115200
boot-delay: 1s
boot-device: nand-if-fail-then-ethernet
enter-setup-on: any-key
cpu-mode: power-save
memory-test: no
cpu-frequency: 175MHz
boot-protocol: bootp
enable-jumper-reset: yes
Should tell you what you are set at.


system routerboard settings> set cpu-mode=regular

Should set it to NON power save mode. Use the "print" command to see what current settings are. Be aware that one will have to re-boot for actual settings to take hold.

Jay - CTO Genesis Wireless