hooking up a vbox to an actuator with hall effect sensor

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drhydro

drhydro

SatelliteGuys Pro
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Oct 19, 2004
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I finally got my vbox and went to hook it up last night. I noticed a problem right off. The vbox diagram shows that +5v /-5v (such as those used for a reed switch sensor) wires from the actuator position sensor need to be hooked up to the back of the vbox. Currently (on my analog reciever) I have pulse and ground hooked up to the hall effect sensor in my actuator.

My question is this- how am i supposed to hook this darned thing up so it reads the pulses from the hall effect sensor? Or am i looking at picking up a newer actuator arm ( such as the superjack) that has a reed switch sensor?

Thanks in advance :-D
 
I guess I'll resurrect this thread.

Did you ever resolve this issue? I just picked up a used Von Weise actuator and the guy I got it from warned me not to hook the position sensor up to the +5V line or I would burn out the sensor. Just use the pulse and ground. I think this implies that it also has a hall effect sensor on it.

I too am wondering if I can use a V-box for a positioner as I want to hook up this dish to a DVB card at some point. Right now I have an analog receiver with which I'm having problems preventing from fine tuning the dish position when configuring new satellites.
 
It turned out that my saginaw thomson actuator uses a reed switch, not a hall effect. I was kind of confused because my Audi's use a sensor that works the same way (and looks kind of the same) for setting timing, but they call it a "hall effect" sensor. hmmmmmmm, darned Germans confusing the rest of us......

What i did find out, was that the vbox will NOT work with an optical sensor (hall effect) unless you do a modification to supply power to the hall effect sensor, but will work with a reed switch. Reed switches use 2 wires to the actuator, hall effect uses 3 wires.

Anyways, just as soon as i get my vbox back (hopefully today) i will be setting it up and letting you folks know how it works.
 
mark_calgary said:
Right now I have an analog receiver with which I'm having problems preventing from fine tuning the dish position when configuring new satellites.
Click to expand...
Have you thought of running a splitter to supply signal to both the analog reciever and your dvb reciever? That way the analog will get the signal it needs to "fine tune" your BUD ;-)
 
hey where did you pick up your vbox from?

drhydro said:
I finally got my vbox and went to hook it up last night. I noticed a problem right off. The vbox diagram shows that +5v /-5v (such as those used for a reed switch sensor) wires from the actuator position sensor need to be hooked up to the back of the vbox. Currently (on my analog reciever) I have pulse and ground hooked up to the hall effect sensor in my actuator.

My question is this- how am i supposed to hook this darned thing up so it reads the pulses from the hall effect sensor? Or am i looking at picking up a newer actuator arm ( such as the superjack) that has a reed switch sensor?

Thanks in advance :-D
Click to expand...
 
I picked mine up from PSB, excellant price and service.
 
drhydro said:
Have you thought of running a splitter to supply signal to both the analog reciever and your dvb reciever? That way the analog will get the signal it needs to "fine tune" your BUD ;-)
Click to expand...

I can slave it to the IF out on the Pansat. I'm not sure, though, what the analog receiver (Toshiba TRX-120) requires for a signal for fine tuning the dish position. If it uses signal strength it might work but if it has to lock to an NTSC channel then I'm out of luck as at least one of the sats I want has no analog on it (Pas-9) only DVB and Digicipher. I may yet try and see what it does this weekend.
 
mark,
I know that when i hit "auto tune" on my drake 1724 reciever i have to have it on an analog signal otherwise it gets very confused and starts "panning" the dish across the sky looking for a signal. Hopefully yours works on general signal strength......
 
drhydro said:
mark,
I know that when i hit "auto tune" on my drake 1724 reciever i have to have it on an analog signal otherwise it gets very confused and starts "panning" the dish across the sky looking for a signal. Hopefully yours works on general signal strength......
Click to expand...

I suspect that mine will work the same way. It would be more robust to fine tune a signal you are locked on to than just signal strength. I know I would have designed it that way given that all desired satellites across North America 10-15 years ago would have been full of NTSC.


I just realized I now have a fun potential project on my hands if I want to use a vbox. It should be fairly simple to adapt the von Weise output (Hall effect sensor?) to look like a reed switch with a small amount of circuitry. I'll post any results I come up with. But first I'll search to see if anyone has already done this.....
 
drhydro said:
If you have a hall effect sensor there is a modification to the Vbox II that can be done, take a look here

http://www.vetrun.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1771&highlight=modification

as for the vbox we are using, the dp710, i havent seen where anyone has modified one to work with a hall effect sensor
Click to expand...



Hmmmmm.... Since I only have two wires coming from my actuator for the position sensor I'm wondering if they have already integrated some sort of switch into it already. I'm thinking it might work with the vbox II if I connect it across the +/- sensor input ignoring the +/-5V lines. But I'll need to do some investigating first. Thanks for the link. I had not seen any info on the vbox II yet.
 
Mark,
From what i was told, if you only have 2 wires you most likely have a reed switch for a position sensor.

Difference in between the two vbox's are as follows:

dmsi vbox (dp710)-
1) Up to 40 satellites stored (according to the owners manual, DMSI's website says 28 satellites)
2) Works properly ONLY with a diseqc compatable reciever (no real stand alone postitioning capabilities)
3) Works ONLY with reed switch position sensors (which most BUD actuators use)
4) Inexpensive if bought thru PSB, arround 36.00 shipped.

Moteck Vbox II
1) Up to 60 satellites stored
2) Can be used with diseqc compatable reciever or stand alone dish positioner- comes with its own remote control
3) Supposedly compatable with all actuators (this is the manufacturers claim, not mine)
4) Cost around 79.00 + shipping, I haven't found many places that sell them, mainly fleebay
 
I noted the small number of available sat positions and was initally conerned because I dang near had my CoolSat filled to capacity with sat positions. I'm hoping it isn't as big a problem with the C/Ku dish since many sats will share a position as opposed to before where one LNB was offset and the same sat for C or Ku would require two positions.

I'm going to have to map out just how many positions I think I'll need for the bigger dish.

I have the DP710 that i'm going to pair with my PanSat 3500s.
 
drhydro said:
Mark,
From what i was told, if you only have 2 wires you most likely have a reed switch for a position sensor.

Difference in between the two vbox's are as follows:

dmsi vbox (dp710)-
<snip>
Moteck Vbox II
<snip>
Click to expand...

I need to investigate further since my actuator position sensor works properly when connected across the receiver pulse input and ground pins. If it is a reed switch maybe there is a pullup resistor either on the actuator (powered via the motor drive) or on the receiver pulse input line. I'll get out my dusty Sherlock Holmes hat and try and deduce how it works this weekend. :D


I'll be looking at sources for a vbox soon as well. Yesterday I ordered a DVB card for my PC - gotta have 4:2:2 and HD these days for a lot of feeds.....

I'm really loving my toys these days, especially those that I have to put together myself. They are big puzzles for big children.
 
Shawn95GT said:
I noted the small number of available sat positions and was initally conerned because I dang near had my CoolSat filled to capacity with sat positions. I'm hoping it isn't as big a problem with the C/Ku dish since many sats will share a position as opposed to before where one LNB was offset and the same sat for C or Ku would require two positions.

I'm going to have to map out just how many positions I think I'll need for the bigger dish.

I have the DP710 that i'm going to pair with my PanSat 3500s.
Click to expand...
I too was initially concerned about the limited # of sat positions. After i figured out just how many sats that have DVB/analog programming that i can see with my BUD (not counting dbs sats for audio or the occasional feed, for those i have pizza dishes set up) then i figured it should work just fine.
 
Pulse inputs do have pullup resistor. Correct connection is to grd and pulse. Reed switch pulls pulse input down to grd.

Hall effect is not the same as optic sensor. Wiring is the same however. There are three leads, grd, and pulse are connected same as reed switch. The third lead is what powers the "sensor". Depending on the sensor it needs +5 to +12 volts. (referenced to ground)

VW optic needs +12 vdc (newer ones work down to +5 vdc). Saginaw hall effect will work with +5.
 
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