Communications Room Setup

[PopcornNMore]

I just built myself a 10'x4' Communications Room as well as a home theater within our basement. The Communications Room will be used to route various video inputs (satellite dishes, OTA, etc) to diffeent rooms within the house as well as serve as a place for me to troubleshoot and tinker with various satellite receivers (analog, digital, DCII, DirecTV, Dish Network).

My first thought was to run a dual coax to each dish and OTA antenna. This would allow me to easily add, swap and remove DiSEqC, 22 KHz switches and splitters as needed to test various receivers.

Then I remembered that in order for a DiSEqC switch to work with a SG2100 motor drive the order needs to be (Receiver -> Motor -> Switch -> LNB). So now my best bet might be to have a weatherproof enclosure out by the dishes that would contain these switches. This would also allow easy hookup for aligning the dishes and provide a way to ground them properly. It would also reduce the number of coax runs needed.

The only bad part is when testing an analog or DCII receiver I would need to run out to the dishes and remove the DiSEqC switch in order for the receiver to work.

Perhaps I could use a high frequency splitter within the weatherproof box to split the output of the LNB and then run two coaxes from each dish to Communications Room? I could then label one for DCII or analog use and the other for digital use and keep the DiSEqC switch always inserted into the system.

How would you set this up to use various receivers? I now have 5 dishes installed and plan on adding more soon. The 5 dishes I have installed are as follows:
1.8m Fortec - C band
1.2m Channel Master - KU band
StarBand - KU band
DirecTV 18" - DSS
Dish Network 1000.2 with DPP44 switch - DSS

I also want would like to mount the DPP44 switch within the Communications Room. Would the Dish Pro LNB's work for FTA if I used a high frequency switch to split the output before going into the DPP44 switch? Or do only regular DSS circular LNB's work for FTA?

I currently have over 100 analog, digital, DirecTV, Dish Network, DCII and rackmount receivers.

This also reminds me that I am currently coming up with an Excel spreadsheet listing every analog, digital, DCII, DirecTV and Dish Network receiver ever made that I will make available on this forum once completed. Perhaps I can get some input on some models I forgot to add to the list.

 

[lumpkin666]

I wonder how well it'd work for you to dedicate a line right to your motor, and then have two more lines from the lnbs. Use a high freq splitter so that you send the signal to the motor down one line, while sending the diseq commands through the splitter and controlling the diseqc inside the house. People are doing this setup out at the dish frequently to overcome the insertion loss of a motor, so you'd just be moving it back to the house.

As far as the dishpro lnb's, they'll work fine for FTA. I don't remember if there is a different setting, but I was using a dishpro 500 setup for freebies and music before the music "went silent" on dish.

 

[PopcornNMore]

That might just work. Thank you so much!

I am also glad that the Dish Pro LNB's will work as well.