doctordialtone
Member
Perfect! The story has a happy ending! Thanks for the update.
Enjoy!
Enjoy!
SDS100/SDS200: SDS100 Scanning Issues
- Thread starter blades561
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MStep
Member
It is somewhat disheartening that now, after over 2 years of being on the market, we are still dealing with "cold soldier joint" issues.
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Assuming this is the same as the issue recently addressed, that was brought up to engineering only a few months ago. No engineering change will affect units already in the field. I do not know if the fix has propagated to the dealer stock yet. We will really only know when we see that new units are not affected (and then only after some time has passed with no issues).
That's the thing about non-systemic issues - are they 'gone forever' or is it a good run?
And it may be an entirely different cold solder joint issue. The RO doesn't say (as reported).
I will point out that the issue of repair has also been addressed according to management, so we hope the return of the issue is gone.
That's the thing about non-systemic issues - are they 'gone forever' or is it a good run?
And it may be an entirely different cold solder joint issue. The RO doesn't say (as reported).
I will point out that the issue of repair has also been addressed according to management, so we hope the return of the issue is gone.
blades561
Member
True. How have they not fixed the production problem after years of knowing about it. I bought it January 2021 brand new.
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On what are you basing the statement "How have they not fixed the production problem after years of knowing about it." when I brought it to their attention in I believe February, and immediately recommended production line changes which even *I* don't know (for a fact) are implemented or not? I would like to hear this from your source that they are not changed. I would also like to talk to the person who you say knew about the issue and did nothing. The last I know for a fact is that management relayed my recommendations to the engineers.
Not trying to be argumentative, but I would like more than "anonymous sources" say... I would like to know who reportedly dropped the ball.
Not trying to be argumentative, but I would like more than "anonymous sources" say... I would like to know who reportedly dropped the ball.
MStep
Member
It certainly would be good to know for sure that the issue has been resolved. As you point out, you are not even privy to that information. I appreciate your honesty that you don't even know "for a fact" if and when the changes were made. There could be hundreds of units sitting on dealer's shelves with the issue, or there could be thousands. Uniden is playing their cards close to the vest. I imagine that manufacturing knows what batches are affected, but obviously will not release the serial numbers of affected units for fear of sabotaging their own sales by having consumers cherry-picking with dealers.
I'm sure you've read the posts here, where some folks have had their units gone to repair for well over a month. And for a few unfortunates for whom the first repair did not work out, longer than that. And no one seems to be sure if their one year "warranty clocks" continue to tick away, even while their units are being repaired.
There has to be a better way. And there is. At least in restoring consumer confidence. Once again, as I have suggested before, Uniden should "step up to the plate" and simply put a retroactive three year warranty on the SDS series. It is their "flagship" scanner series, and they should be proud of the advances that were made, mostly under the stewardship of Paul Opitz.
I'm sure you've read the posts here, where some folks have had their units gone to repair for well over a month. And for a few unfortunates for whom the first repair did not work out, longer than that. And no one seems to be sure if their one year "warranty clocks" continue to tick away, even while their units are being repaired.
There has to be a better way. And there is. At least in restoring consumer confidence. Once again, as I have suggested before, Uniden should "step up to the plate" and simply put a retroactive three year warranty on the SDS series. It is their "flagship" scanner series, and they should be proud of the advances that were made, mostly under the stewardship of Paul Opitz.
blades561
Member
I only hypothesized based on the years long problem and that I just bought the scanner in 1/2021, I'm sure it's from original stock but maybe there should have been a recall but probably wasn't because of cost. Cheaper to fix bad ones. Just a huge hassle we all went thru trying to diagnose the issue. Plus I'm new to all this which didn't help.
From the threads I've read and the other user comments here this problem has been around since 2018. I dont have facts on exact dates but generally speaking I shouldn't have even been able to purchase a 3 year old brand new scanner. Like I said above maybe they should have been recalled and replaced at vendors with new updated scanners with fix. The repair the recalled ones and sold them as refurbished.
Believe me, I am grateful the problem was fixed, I wasn't nuts thinking it was my doing, and I have it back finally. There just has to be a better way.
Pete
MStep
Member
Ubbe reported in one of his threads:
"We had Firmware Friday's when SDS100 had too many bugs that needed to be ironed out."
(Ubbe Post #18 Uniden Tech Support Thread: Basic Questions After Getting Back In Hobby (SDS 200) Please)
This seems to bear out blades561 assessment that there were problems long before Joe Bearcat came board and going back quite a while. I've been monitoring the SDS forums for nearly a year, and I don't recall "Firmware Fridays". This must have been early on in the SDS100 days.
Firmware however, does not include the Cold Solder Joint (CSJ) issue. It would be interesting to find when that was first documented, although cases could go as far back as the introduction of the radio, all the while being poorly observed or incorrectly doumented.
Blades, if you purchased the unit in January 2021, unless it was buried in someone's inventory, I would not believe it was from the "original stock".
Someone here with more time than I have to spare and who is more learned in designing such registries, could come up with something like a "SDS 100/200 Registry), so that problems and conditions can be correlated with serial number batches.
"We had Firmware Friday's when SDS100 had too many bugs that needed to be ironed out."
(Ubbe Post #18 Uniden Tech Support Thread: Basic Questions After Getting Back In Hobby (SDS 200) Please)
This seems to bear out blades561 assessment that there were problems long before Joe Bearcat came board and going back quite a while. I've been monitoring the SDS forums for nearly a year, and I don't recall "Firmware Fridays". This must have been early on in the SDS100 days.
Firmware however, does not include the Cold Solder Joint (CSJ) issue. It would be interesting to find when that was first documented, although cases could go as far back as the introduction of the radio, all the while being poorly observed or incorrectly doumented.
Blades, if you purchased the unit in January 2021, unless it was buried in someone's inventory, I would not believe it was from the "original stock".
Someone here with more time than I have to spare and who is more learned in designing such registries, could come up with something like a "SDS 100/200 Registry), so that problems and conditions can be correlated with serial number batches.
blades561
Member
That was my thinking and conclusion that no fix was put in place during production. Thats all I was getting at. I've only been on here troubleshooting my issues so I'm not an expert by any means.
Thankful for everyones help along the way. Hope something changes going forward.
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I will keep pressing to make sure things do. But sometimes I don't get feedback, so I would be very surprised if someone else did.
As for when issue X started, my focus is on solving it then we can deal with affected units. The best way to solve an issue is to take steps to ensure it does not happen in production. Fix the leak, then you can worry about the water damage.
I bought one of the first batch of SDS100 in 2018. This was sent back in Jan 2019 for the cold solder repair after the unit got too hot. And it still is happening? No excuse for this still happening. Design or manufacturing issue. After my SDS100 came back and loading firmware after firmware I went back and bought a 325p2.
blades561
Member
bucks83
I Remember DOS
How is your 325p2 working out ? A friend was disappointed with his 325p2, sent it back and was told nothing wrong. He wanted to put it on eBay but decided it would be "dishonest" to sell it to someone else.
If the base cause of your friend's issues was related to a simulcast system, then there may well have been nothing wrong with the scanner, so there's no dishonesty in selling it, as long as no false claims as to performance are made.
I have a 325P2. At home, where I'm outside the simulcast dead sea of several local systems, it performs well. But after I got my SDS100, I took the SDS100, 325P2, 436HP, and my TRX-1 to several of the local areas which have severe simulcast problems.
No issues with the SDS100. The 436HP was getting 70 to 80% of the calls, but the 325P2 was around a 50 to 60% level, ahead of only the TRX-1, which was below 50%. Bottom line is that the 325P2 can work well for many people, as long as they are not in a heavily simulcast system area.
hulka
Member
I bought mine September of ’18 and knock on wood no issues. I purchased a SDS 200 in March of ‘19 and again knock on wood no humming or other issues. My 100 does seem to scan slower than previous scanners that I have owned but it picks up what I want. Want my serial number for reference?
Ubbe
Member
Uniden set the firmware to scan at a max rate of 45ch/s compared to the older BCD436 that does 80ch/s.
I don't know if it was done deliberately or if it's a bug because the search rate are still something like 80 steps/s and when switching between VHF-LOW and other bands it has a noticeably delay, as it seems to keep track of (PLL lock) when the receiver needs time when setting a new frequency and then stabilize before sampling the signal. The change took place in the same time period that the debug mode went from sampling each millisecond to each 2 milliseconds. Perhaps some extra firmware code where loading the CPU too much?
/Ubbe
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Under what conditions was this determined? I have tested a 436 and SDS100 and found them to be very similar after removing RF influences. (primarily the antennas)
I run the SDS100 side by side to the 325p2. Most of the time they are equal in reception, somethings the SDS100 does better, somethings the 325P2 does better, but the 325p2 is faster and easier to use, especially when I have to shut down banks to listen to one bank due to a fire call. Oh yah the 325p2 doesn't get hot.
Ubbe
Member
I set up favorite list with a couple of hundred frequencies with a 25KHz step size to check the rate and also the debug files, my own and from other users, show that the SDS100 never goes faster than 45ch/s in scan rate, but are still the old speed at about 80steps/s when doing search between two frequencies that use the same step size.
The SDS100 are primary intended for scanning trunked systems that use simulcast. Trunked systems that use a control data channel will have the SDS100 to dwell at least 1,5 sec on that channel. Then the 45 or 80ch/s rate are of little concern. Only when doing conventional scanning of something like VHF air or mil-air and those kind of systems will it be more evident that it goes much slower.
There is also the problem with internal interferencies that slow down scan rate in conventional mode in SDS100. Without an antenna connected the 700-800MHz band seems to be pretty clean by just some hesitation in the scanning, but in the 400MHz it really slows down scanning a lot, not to mention 150MHz which seems to be the worst with the most internal interferencies that constantly stops scanning every one or two seconds.
/Ubbe
MStep
Member
The SDS series are certainly NOT speed demons. I would imagine that they just have too much information to process per channel to determine exactly what mode they should switch to. I think my Radio Shack Pro-2004 was the fastest scanner I've ever had. Because of the complexity of communications systems as they now exist, the days of really "fast" scanning are over.
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