Is there a trick to moving a Joey?

smokey982

SatelliteGuys Pro
Original poster
Sep 7, 2005
2,050
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Cleveland, TN (Chattanooga Market)
So I’ve had a Joey in an unused bedroom for a while now. We recently finished a sunroom on the back of our house. So I moved the Joey from the bedroom to the sunroom. I basically unscrewed the coax that was feeding the bedroom from the splitter and screwed in the new coax going to the sunroom. But I cannot get the Joey to detect my hopper for some reason. I tried unplugging the hopper for 10 seconds and nothing. I tried unplugging the Joey for 10 seconds and got nothing.

This coax going to the sunroom has been in place for about 10 years. The sunroom was previously a screened in porch. I temporarily moved that same Joey out to the porch about 4 or 5 years ago and it worked fine. Is there anything else I can try?
 
Do you by any chance have multiple coax's? I have 3 running into our sunroom with 4 Cat-5. Future proofed most everywhere when we built. When I want to use a spare cable, I put a sounder / Signal Tracer on one and and then go into the basement and poke for the right cable. For Coax, I hook the positive of the tracer to the shield so I can detect it better.

You will probably know, but if someone put in a splitter thinking it was just going to standard cable or antenna then I think you are pretty much hosed.
 
Don't Joey's have a MoCA signal strength display?

If you have Ethernet, another thing you could do is plug it into that and run w/o MoCA. If you don't have Ethernet in that sun room, you could try a wireless adapter.
 
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Do you by any chance have multiple coax's? I have 3 running into our sunroom with 4 Cat-5. Future proofed most everywhere when we built. When I want to use a spare cable, I put a sounder / Signal Tracer on one and and then go into the basement and poke for the right cable. For Coax, I hook the positive of the tracer to the shield so I can detect it better.

You will probably know, but if someone put in a splitter thinking it was just going to standard cable or antenna then I think you are pretty much hosed.

I only have 1 coax going to the porch. Here’s a pic of the mess I have. The cable coming from the dish runs into this thing with the orange label and then goes into the splitter.View attachment 156232
 
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Then the cable comes from the orange labeled device into a splitter. I basically just unscrewed the cable going to the bedroom and screwed in the cable going to the porch (white cable).
IMG_2408.jpg
 
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I only have 1 coax going to the porch. Here’s a pic of the mess I have. The cable coming from the dish runs into this thing with the orange label and then goes into the splitter.View attachment 156232
So from dish to the orange thing (hub?) and from there to the Hopper, and presumably you didn't disconnect that. Then from the other side of the orange thing you go to a splitter with 3 outputs?
Then the cable comes from the orange labeled device into a splitter. I basically just unscrewed the cable going to the bedroom and screwed in the cable going to the porch (white cable).
I would plug the porch cable directly into the orange thing and see if that fixes it. This will obviously unhook any other Joey's you might have around the house.
 
So from dish to the orange thing (hub?) and from there to the Hopper, and presumably you didn't disconnect that. Then from the other side of the orange thing you go to a splitter with 3 outputs?

I would plug the porch cable directly into the orange thing and see if that fixes it. This will obviously unhook any other Joey's you might have around the house.

So if I bypass the splitter and plug the porch wire directly into the hub. Should I have to reset the hopper or Joey for it to detect the hopper? Does the Joey need to be unplugged when I do this?
 
I would unplug the Joey and the Hopper when you do it. Then plug them back in after the rewire. At the sunroom side, is the coax hanging out or is it attached to a coax plate that is on the wall. If that is so, take the plate cover off and make sure that the coax from the splitter is in fact attached to the plate. If it is attached, remove the coax from the splitter and make sure that the stinger is long enough to make contact. Reattach it and see if things get better. If you have a barrel connector, try to bypass the plate entirely and attach the Joey directly to the barrel.
 
I would plug the porch cable directly into the orange thing and see if that fixes it. This will obviously unhook any other Joey's you might have around the house.

I did this and still no luck. I’m beginning to think my cable may be bad somewhere along the way. What’s the least expensive tester I could buy to check my cable?
 
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I don't know how much the radio frequency testers are, but you can test them for continuity with an ohmmeter. When I do it I disconnect the cable from both sides and short one end. Then I check the ohms between the ground and center conductor on the other end. Should only be a few ohms, depending on the length.

The other thing I have found is that kinked cables don't work well at radio frequencies.

If a cable passes the continuity test but still doesn't work I just replace it. I have a 500 foot roll of RG6 and its cheaper than buying an expensive RF cable tester.
 
I did this and still no luck. I’m beginning to think my cable may be bad somewhere along the way.
You can try my WiFi suggestion too.
I have a 500 foot roll of RG6 and its cheaper than buying an expensive RF cable tester.
I bought a Dish-branded WiFi dongle from crodrules. I forget how much I paid, but I am sure it cost me less than 500' of coax. As soon as Dish brings out the Joey 4 and I buy one so I can turn it on and off at will, I intend to try it out.
 
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Problem solved! The coax is ran through the attic and down inside a cubby hole on the sunroom. Inside that cubby hole was my wall plate. The small piece of coax coming from the wall plate to the back of the tv had a bad connector. Thanks for all the suggestions. I’m just glad my cable run wasn’t bad and I didn’t have to pull a new one.
 
Then the cable comes from the orange labeled device into a splitter. I basically just unscrewed the cable going to the bedroom and screwed in the cable going to the porch (white cable). View attachment 156233
Hey Hipcat is that one of your installs? LMAO and JK of course..

Sad part is I see that crap all time..

Can't stand people who don't take pride in their work.

Even people who don't know sh*t can spot a good install from bad if everything is neat, straight and uniform.
 
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Hey Hipcat is that one of your installs? LMAO and JK of course..

Sad part is I see that crap all time..

Can't stand people who don't take pride in their work.

Even people who don't know sh*t can spot a good install from bad if everything is neat, straight and uniform.
Yeah, I'm very anal about how things look. Probably comes from when I was a contractor doing remodels and things like that where I just got used to everything being nice and straight and neat
 
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