| Answer: | The SkyFi and Roady have some diagnostics screens that can be helpful in finding the best signal and antenna pointing, among other things. Here's how to get these diagnostic screens to appear, and what they mean.
The process to get these screens to appear is the same for the SkyFi and the Roady. Some have said this will also work for the Commander, but others have said not.
1. Make sure your receiver is off.
2. Press these keys in order: 2 0 7 XM (button in the middle of the wheel on the SkyFi, or the wheel itself on the Roady)
3. Press Display 3 times to cycle through the normal displays to the first Diagnostic screen.
The Roady displays one piece of information on each screen, so there are many more screens on the Roady, and the order isn't this exact order, but here's the meaning behind the info on the screens.
SkyFi Screen 1
* SAT1: East Satellite at 85 degrees west longitude.
* SAT2: West Satellite at 115 degrees west longitude.
* TERR: Terrestrial Repeater signal
* DEMOD: A check mark means you have demodulator lock. This means the receiver is locked on the signal from that source.
* TDM: A check mark means you are synchronized with the Time Division Multiplexed signal from that source.
* BER %: Percentage Bit Error Rate. This is the percentage of received data bits in error. For satellite this value should be less than 3% for error free audio. For terrestrial, it should be below 6%.
* AGC: Automatic Gain Control Level. This is an indication of the amount of internal gain needed to recover the signal. The more negative, the higher the signal being received.
SkyFi Screen 2
* BER: Raw Bit Error Rate. This is the number of received data bits in error. This value divided by the maximum number of errors in a measurement interval is the BER % on Screen 1. Max number for SAT1 and SAT2 is 5440. Max for TERR is 6800.
* AGC: Same as on Screen 1.
* C/N: Signal to Noise Ratio measured as Carrier Power divided by Noise Power. For SATs, this value needs to be greater than 7. It does not apply for TERR. This is a good satellite antenna pointing indicator.
* RSBK and RSBY: Reed Solomon Block and Byte Errors. They should be 0.
There are two additional screens on the SkyFi. One of them shows a number of other coded diagnostics that I don't believe any of us has figured out their significance. I believe these are the first 9 screens on the Roady. The other displays various version numbers and dates for the various firmwares of the receiver, decoder, and whatnot.
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