Fairly new sds100. It seems if the unit is on for several hours(plugged in the mini-a port) it stops receiving for the most part. It will occasionally catch something every 20 minutes or so. Where I live is a summer resort area that is non stop this time of year so I don’t think it’s lack of traffic. Could it be cold solder joint heating up and separating? Or maybe a sad card issue?
SDS100/SDS200: Sds100 not receiving after being on for a while.
- Thread starter kub
- Start date
Is it sitting somewhere that it might get too hot?
You say "fairly new". Is that "fairly new" as a radio recently manufactured, or do you mean "new to you". See this page to check your serial number and determine, approximately, when it was manufactured,
The cold solder joint problems, for scanners manufactured near, or within a year or so of the initial production date, affected those early model scanners. The 'now vanished' Joe Bearcat, Uniden's erstwhile contact here in the forums, indicated that after the complaints, Uniden made changes in the production process which should have prevented further solder joint issues. (That was likely a couple years ago that he posted that.I don't recall the exact date or month.) So, while it's not impossible that you do have a defective unit, with a solder joint problem, it's less likely.
I would start with your SD card. If you read various threads in the forum, you'll see tales of users with issues that, at first glance, you think 'there's no possible way it could be the card', and yet that's exactly what it turned out to be. Formatting the card & then using the "clear user data" (on the drop-down scanner menu in Sentinel), then re-sending your lists to the scanner might solve your problem. Hopefully it does. (If you have a spare card, try it. Having a spare is good practice, even if you are not currently having issues.) If formatting and reloading the card does not solve the problem, at least that's something you can try that won't cost you a thing other than a few minutes of your time.
If the card does not help, and you're reasonably certain it's not getting too hot, then maybe someone else can make a suggestion.
Ubbe
Member
It could then be a loss of sensitivity? To check that the scanner still works you can do Channel+162.400+Channel and scroll thru up to 162.550 to check all NOAA weather channels between those frequencies if any can still be received as good as when the scanner are first powered on.
If you power off the scanner and on again does it start to receive properly, or do you have to wait for it to cool down?
SDS100 are very sensitive to overload and loose its sensitivity when exposed to strong signals from other frequencies. If you have the waterfall option installed you can look at its 17MHz span when first powering on the scanner and then compare to how it looks when you feel the scanner have lost reception. Look at how and where the noise floor are on the spectrum display.
Program the frequency, or several, that have most activity as a pure analog one without any CTCCS and open squelch and listen if it still can be heard but are too weak. You can have those channels in scan and when you first have heard that they are active you can do temporary avoid to them and when you think you have lost reception you can stop scan and manually scroll to those avoided frequencies and listen to them with squelch at 0, or they will also be automatically unavoided when you deselect that scan list from scan and then select it again using the "Set Scan Selection" in the scanners menu.
Check that it isn't an antenna problem by listening to a constant transmission, like those NOAA channels, and wiggle the antenna to see if you loose reception.
/Ubbe
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- Dec 19, 2002
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It would be good to let us know what you were listening to. As Ubbe said, when it stops working try jiggle things or tuning in something like NOAA channels so that you know it is just not a problem with what you normally listen to. That might help determine the cause.
It’s mainly a 700mhz p25 phase 2 system but my county still tones out fire over conventional channels which I can’t pick up clear for nothing, but it’s always been That way. That’s another issue I would like to eventually dive into but I don’t think it relates to this.
Ubbe
Member
Program the display to show Digital Error Count and look at the number of errors. If the value change a lot, between 0 and 3 at some times but increase to 5-10 at others, then it could be interference from other transmitters that might help with the different filter settings and also try the IFX setting to a frequency, that you have to enter on the display with Channel+freq+Channel and then Fn+7, to see if you can get lower data errors.
The fire out channels are probably more like VHF 155MHz? That frequency band are usually more suspect to interference issues.
It would help if you have another receiver/scanner where you can monitor your frequencies, even in analog mode using any old scanner, to power on and first check that you can receive anything like a data modulation when the SDS100 functions properly and then listen if that still hears your systems transmissions when you suspect the SDS100 to fail, as any other scanner will have a much better receiver that isn't compromised so easily from other strong transmitters compared to a SDS100.
/Ubbe
The d error count is often high. It jumps around and I’ve seen the high teens. And also the fire channels are 155mhz
Really hoping for the OP's sake that the SD card need not be replaced. It's a delicate surgical procedure to remove and re-insert it
They should have engineered it to pop in and out from the side. One thing AOR got right with the AR-DV10
I couldn't agree with you more. I also try to avoid switching cards in the 436HP & SDS100 whenever possible. Using the SD card formatter programming, selecting overwrite instead of 'quick format', clear user data, reloading the active profile, maybe repeating them, trying to avoid the dreaded replacement.Really hoping for the OP's sake that the SD card need not be replaced. It's a delicate surgical procedure to remove and re-insert it
Whistler's TRX-1 also has an easy to access card. Slide the battery compartment cover off & there it is, on the edge. Since the SDS100 is touted as 'water resistant' (not waterproof), Uniden, naturally, did not want to have the card socket exposed that much, but surely there was somewhere else, in the battery compartment area, that a better socket could have been placed.
If nothing is cured by formatting, reloading data, etc, then card replacement might be the only option left short of sending the unit in for repair. There's several videos on YouTube on dealing with the poorly designed card socket. This one is the first I ran across with a quick search. Note that the card socket on the 436HP, as well as the SDS100, is the same design.
defiantly sounds like a heat issue. Is it inside a case when inside?
Not in a case. After I posted last night I decided to hook it up to sentinel and upload from scanner to program and then back to the scanner(copy and replace) and seemed to start receiving again. Maybe it is an sd card issue.
Could be. Do you by any chance record the transmissions? Meaning is the radio constantly writing to the SD card?
Double checked it’s not recording.
What you describe sounds like it could be the sds100 cold solder joint issue. When it stops receiving, are you able to receive a NOAA station? What is the RSSI?
It will still occasionally pick up part of a transmission(maybe one an hour). But it goes from non stop to pretty much nothing and I can run a stream on my phone and hear calls going out that it would 100% normally pick up.
I’ll have to wait until it happens again to check.
Also try swapping the antenna. The center pin can shift with thermal expansion (CTE) over time.
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