Aiming a motorized dish?

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I finally got my dish motorized this morning. Here is what I did.

1. Aimed dish without motor to my true south sat - 74°W.

2. Measured the angle of the dish mount to determine where to set my homemade motor mount.

3. Mounted motor and dish on pole and found true south sat using known stored channel.

4. Stored position using DiSeqc instead of USALS as I have had problems trying USALS in prior attempts to set up motor. It tends to run too far with it.

5. Drove dish using button on motor to next nearest sat - 72°W, peaked signal and stored.

6. Then I worked my way west using the button on the motor, stopping at my known stored sats, peaking the signal and storing each one as I went.

I am following the arc from 72° to 129° now. It really didn't take too long today, but I have spent a lot time studying here and trying different times to make it work. I had just about given up on the SG2100 motor but now am just like a kid with a new toy!:D


Larobpra,

Excellent job! Pretty fun when you see good results, eh?

RADAR
 
I noticed some of my neigbours' LNBs are lit from inside when they are ON. Should I see any light coming from Invacom QPH-031, when its switched ON on the receiver?

Also, if using a Blind Scan feature on my motorized system, should it result in the receiver automatically rotating the dish to search for frequencies within set motor rotation limits, if the motor is switched ON in the receiver?

For owners of SonicView 360 Elite: I tried different bins to see, if it pickup any Q and noticed that latest Fixed Bin is much smaller in size compare to latest Factory Bin, and doesn't support USALS (it works as Motor in USALS mode), while Factory bin works OK in USALS mode. Can you confirm that? Or, in order to start using USALS, at least one sat position should be manually memorized via SV Elite first?

I know, you can drive motor to ZERO by pressing a button on it, but how to bring the motor to ZERO position via this Receiver? Also, when I reset the Moteck motor via its own Reset Button, should the motor drive to ZERO position automatically?
 
Should I see any light coming from Invacom QPH-031,
Mine does not.

Also, if using a Blind Scan feature on my motorized system,....
Are you talking about scanning the entire are at one shot?
If so, possible - yes, not recommended. It first depends on your receiver, some have a multisat scan, some do not. You would select the Sats you want to scan, then scan, and the receiver will automatically move to the next Sat.

but how to bring the motor to ZERO position via this Receiver?
Look for "Go to Reference" in the Motor setup menu.
 
Did I get it right, the receiver will turn the motor in Blind Scan mode automatically while searching ALL Sats, even so it was never setup before, and there are no memorized motor positions for each Sat? I thought, the pre-loaded with firmware Sat tables are only used in Auto Scan, but not in Blind Scan mode. So, how the receiver would know, when to turn the motor to a new position to continue Blind Scan, and what exact position should it be?
 
It will scan all sats that you have previously stored a channel on.That means you need to first find sats with channels then save them.On the 360 remote when you hit the "sat" button the sats listed there are the ones it will scan.It also does not blind scan them it auto scans when you use the "scan all" selection
 
OK, you say, it Auto Scans only preset Sats with previously found channels in ALL SATS mode (or, I presume, pre-loaded sats, if no channels are found yet). Does the receiver rotate the motor in Auto Scan mode? Also, does it mean, Blind Scan function in SV Elite only works in a Single Sat mode for a fixed motor position (without automatically moving motor from one presumed or firmware pre-loaded sat position to the next), if there are no previously found channels for any sat stored in the receiver?
 
An FTA receiver is not Plug N Play, you have to set up the receiver to your equipment.

Setup one Sat in the receiver, and get the Dish properly aligned. For a motorized Dish - your True South Sat should be first.

The Sat list is probably not up to date, they never are 'cause they change often, so you may need to rename or add Sats to your liking.

You then have to go to each and every Sat you wish to receive and enter the Proper LNB and Switch info.

Now scan the Sats you wish to receive.
Don't confuse Blind / Power Scan with Auto / TP scan, different types of scanning.
I would only scan 1 Sat at a time, until completely comfortable with the receiver's operations
 
Did I get it right, the receiver will turn the motor in Blind Scan mode automatically while searching ALL Sats, even so it was never setup before, and there are no memorized motor positions for each Sat? I thought, the pre-loaded with firmware Sat tables are only used in Auto Scan, but not in Blind Scan mode. So, how the receiver would know, when to turn the motor to a new position to continue Blind Scan, and what exact position should it be?

Zamar,

This is a very tricky area when speaking of the Sonic View 360 Premier or Elite.

There is something rather "wrong" about the USALS function with these receivers. If you start detecting some really bizarre motor operations, it is probably the receiver itself. I have a Sonic View 360 Premier and had all sorts of problems with it trying to use USALS.

I don't want to rehash the whole story again, but I will inform you that I am not very enthusiastic about these SV 360 receivers.

With my Coolsat 5000 receiver, I may AUTO SCAN or BLIND SCAN all sats (select them all and let it go to town on them) and it does an excellent job.

With the Sonic View, if I try the same thing, the receiver starts scanning for channels before it ever even begins to move to the new satellite position. It moves to the wrong position and does all sorts of quirky things.

Your best approach with this receiver is to dial in three or more satellites using DiSEqC 1.2 mode and scan them first, then use USALS for the remainder. This is really very oddball and shouldn't function this way, but it did for me and when I got fed up with the reeiver, I gave it to my brother to test and he found the very same results and hated it, too.

Please read some of the past posts regarding the SV 360 receivers for more details.

I personally would not recommend them, but they can be made to function if you don't mind going crosseyed and bald and cursing a great deal and wearing a looney bin suit!

After I messed with it for a long time, I got a mental image of me as Chief Inspector Dreyfus in the Pink Panther movie where he ends up in a rubber room, in a straight jacket, uttering jibberish and coloring on the walls with a crayon stuck between his toes!

It just doesn't make any sense! I would like to forewarn you about the response from the SV 360's (Premier or Elite). The other models from SV evidently don't have this problem, I surmise as no one ever reports any issues with them.

I merely wanted you to be aware of this ahead of time so that you don't go off thinking that you are doing anything incorrectly right off the bat. You can make them work, but it is rather troublesome in my way of thinking.

In most normal FTA receivers, when you request it to drive to one satellite set up with USALS, it goes right there. With this receiver, it goes to a totally different sat in the wrong direction! :eek: Tell it to go to the reference and it goes to some arbitrary sat position, ask it to go back to the sat you were on and it goes to the home reference position!

If you continue to experiment with this SV receiver, I would appreciate it if you would send me a PM regarding your results.

I am very fond and partial to the Coolsat 5000/6000 and the Fortec Star receivers. They perform as they are advertised and they are very easy to understand, set up and navigate.

AcWxRADAR
 
Just to check for myself I just tried scan all.It does not move the dish.It only scans the selected sat.Maybe its for a stationary dish with multiple lnb's?Blind scan only scans selected sats(It searches for new signals).Autoscan just searches the tp's it allready has in memory.
 
After reading AcWxRADAR's post I went back to see how it was possible.It does move the motor but as stated it starts scanning before the motor gets to destination.In order for the scan all to work the sats have to be selected as favorite's.My guess is it's meant for stationary dishes with multiple lnb's or several stationary dishes.
 
After reading AcWxRADAR's post I went back to see how it was possible.It does move the motor but as stated it starts scanning before the motor gets to destination.In order for the scan all to work the sats have to be selected as favorite's.My guess is it's meant for stationary dishes with multiple lnb's or several stationary dishes.

Andyb2,

It is a quirky machine, isn't it?

My opinion is that is was designed specifically for one purpose and it wasn't for FTA and motorized systems. Without saying it, I hope you understand what I am inferring.
 
I hear ya lol.Think I might play around and add some fake TP's to the list to see if that would work.The reciever could scan the fake ones while it moving.Project for another day thou.
 
The whole point for me to ask for a Blind Scan is that I can't get Q on any signal whatsoever in any direction! But I noticed some variations in S, so was hopping to aim to a higher S signal and blind scan. I already start feeling like AcWxRadar. I was trying to point to a true south using 2 methods: Sun Shadow at Noon and Dishpointer Sat Map View largest scale Mode to a building target. Dishpointer is OFF to East a bit compare to Sun Shadow (or may be its an error on my part).

Anyone can confirm that USALS doesn't work at all with last Fixed bin in SonicView 360 Elite? Or a first sat should be memorized manually for it to work as AcWxRadar suggested? I tried a fixed bin for aiming only, not for viewing, but no lack with any bin so far.

As to SonicView label, I looked at some info on it before buying. The receivers are made by a South Korean division of a known telco company Eycos (former Satforce), Austria, who does the design in both places - its a 4-th gen. refined product, designed to keep cost down for FTA market. The firmware is developed by a third party in Korea and tested for western sats mostly in Europe and a bit in the US by their sole distributor SonicView USA, who owns the Label and selects what features are desired for 3 N/A models with their faceplate. Lack of real software testing in the US leads to such USALS errors with local sats. SonicView has no say in actual hardware design - its a 10-people operation, and most (if not all) large sat distributors in the US either - they all work similar way, just moving boxes with own faceplate through the border. F.e., popular Viewsat label is owned by Viewtech USA, but Viewsat receivers are designed by former Samsung engineers at Intralink Co. in South Korea, and their production seems to be outsourced to Eycos giving visible model build similarity with SV. Historically close to equator Koreans were leaders in FTA receivers, due to much stronger signal and smaller & cheaper analog dishes required than in N/A, leading to earlier mass market. FTA market moved farther from equator with MPEG-2 digital signal intro requiring smaller dishes, and now is being converted to HD with MPEG-4 signal and DVB-S2 equipment.
 
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Look at dish pointer.com and find the general direction to point at.Hook up the C side of the lnb to the motor.Set your reciever for 82w keep motor clamps loose.Move it around till you get quality.You may have to move the elevation up or down but its not hard to find.Your making it hard on yourself lol.Once you have 1 then you can get them all.
 
I am not making anything hard or easy. I did exactly same thing many times already to no avail. I suspect, something may be wrong with the receiver, but how to check it?
 
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To try for Nimiq @ 82, you should have:
LNB Type: Standard
LNB Freq: 11250

At this point, I would take the Motor off, and mount the Dish directly to the Pole
Set the Elevation to about 39 - 40
Connect direct from Receiver to the "C" port of the LNB
Slowly pan the Dish from the East to the West, watching for Quality.
 
Zamar23
I guessed that you were still having problems when you were asking about blind scans. I never do a blind scan unless I have a transponder locked in with a good quality. I understand that this can be quite frustrating I know when I first started (which was a couple of months ago) I hung in there and I got it.

My first shot at this I thought that there was a problem with the receiver, I call the tech guy where I purchased my Fortec Dynamic receiver and he told me that out the thousands of receiver that they sell he only got one back as being really bad.

Take the assumption that all equipment is functioning and take LAK7 suggestions, hang in there this stuff FTA works.
mikelib



So many signals so little time!
Fortec Star Dynamic Receiver - WS9036 - 90cm Dish - Invacom QPH031 LNB - Fortec Star HH42 Motor.
 
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