Lessons learned from when a motor crashes

[skewed]

First I need to say thank you to Gabshere for hooking me up with a used motor. He is an outstanding guy who really came through for me when I needed him. God has a special place for people like him!:

And not to mention Stogie, the not far second runner up who was also more than willing to help me. Thanks to both of you.

I crashed my motor by trying to move it with a pansat 2500 and a 2300. I had the motor pointed at amc4 and both of the other TV's were working The trouble happened when I tryed to move the dish with the 2500. I think the main reason is both of the pansat remotes are very slow and cumbersome. You sometimes have to hit a button you want several times to get the box to reconize what you want to do. Some how I must have hit go to reference or something( and by the way what does that really mean?) Anywaythe digi=power sg2100 must have gotten confused and it got suck. I had a green light but all 3 boxes would not move it. This is where the trouble started and I think You can easily tell what I did wrong from this point on. First I decided that I needed a reset, I read up and it said that I had to push and hold both buttons to reset the motor, easy enough right ? Well up to the roof and low and behold pushing the buttons did not work. I forgot to say keep in mind that it was dark and I had no tv. I figured out thatthe manuall move button worked fine but the other one did nothing. I kept pushing until the soft squishy button fell in. I thought "great" here it goes. I then proceeded to get a semi sharp object to push the button, at night on the roof. So I poke around and what I thought was button moves, I would later realize that this was not a button but the green led. I know its stupid but a real man has to be able to admit to his mistakes. I then determine that the "button" must have fallen in the housing and the quickest fix would be to get a uni-bit and drill a hole to get to it. Now before you call me completely stupid at least I did not try to win a darwin award! I sucessfully drilled the hole and started going "fishing" again with my semi-sharp metal object. I cannot find the reset "button" that fell in any wheres. No wires no nothing. This was the last chance, I got down from the roof and tryed to move the motor and nothing. Nedeless to say I'm going for broke now. Back up on the roof and poking around with semi-sharp object and finally, I saw the green led go to orange!! I MUST have hit the rest button, but wait it did not flash. Hummmmmm. Lets do it again. Oh OOOOO, no more Led, no green light much less orange. I slowely reach up and press the manual button and nothing, shes gone, walking through the valley in the shadow of death gone.

Fast forward a couple of days and Gabshere saves me. I was not able to use any of the tube, brackets or anything from my old set up. His was totally different. So I went through the steps of setting up the motor from scratch. This time I was set up and ready to go in 1 hr or so. So back off the roof and to the viewsat, and NOTHING, What? It caint be say it aint so, tonight is retro night! Back on the roof everything looks right, then back down> I recheck all of my settings everytihng is entered ion correctly. After some serious thunkin I decided to drive it to 97 manually it worked with the "installer" function but not the USALS, now I getting that sinking feeling like I was an idiot. I tune it to 97 and hit save location and I try another one amc4 and do the same thing. Then all of a sudden the usals function starts working, now it will automaticly move the sat when I change channels, amazing. The conclusion? Well if works now but I have to manually drive the motor to each spot and then save it for the usals to work. Before anyone chimes in, I was hell bent and determine not to loose my channel list. I have spent months scanning and believe it or not I seldom have to re scan to get most of the feeds that I looking for. Such as the pro XXXX that was up yesterday, I did not have to do a blind scan to find it as I alread had those tps entered in. So was this it? A corrupted sat file? Or what else. I have since went and turned "off" all of the usals setting on both of my bedroom boxes so that I do not have that problem again. I will only use them to "watch" instead of move from now on. Is this what you call slaving? What does the "go to reference" really do? Any help at all in understand what happened would be appreciated. And it more than ok to poke a little fun while your at it, thanks to Gabshere I look back and laugh at myself and thats cool, we all have to do that at some time.

I forgot to add that the "reset" button is a pin hole on both motors. You need a paper clip or something to push it. Had I known that none of this might not have happened the way it did. There is a small hole next to the green light to insert the clip into. Another thanks to Gabshere for that tip.

 

[Lak7]

Is this what you call slaving?

Slaved usually refers to an FTA Box "slaved" to a 4DTV or Analog. The 4DTV oor Analog drives the dish, controls the polarity, the FTA is just along for the ride.

What does the "go to reference" really do?

Moves the Motor back to Zero, center. Really useful when setting up Motor. When fine tuning, you can use the User or Installer mode (viewsats) to Bump the Dish East / West to confirm which way you need to twist the Motor Mount on the Pole, then use "go to reference" to get back to Zero.

Then all of a sudden the usals function starts working, now it will automaticly move the sat

Installer or User mode in the Viewsat is DiSEqC 1.2 Motor control. When using DiSEqC 1.2, the mechanical setup is the same, buy you have to Drive the Dish from Sat to Sat and Save it's position, from there it remebers.
USALS uses your Long and Lat and will then "calculate" where the Sat should be based on the location (97west) entered for each Sat.

You should only have to "setup"(enter Long and Lat) USALS for one Sat, then just select USALS in the motor option for the other Sats.
To test USALS in the Viewsat, select a Sat, set Motor to USALS and click "OK" for it to move, then run outside and see if it's moving.

 

[starman345]

Got to reference means go to zero. If you look at the bottom of the tube where it connects to the motor there is a pointer and scale, when you select go to reference in the receiver the motor should drive the dish to true south..your longitude, and the pointer should be on zero. It is a reference point, when setting up, put the receiver in Usals mode, with your longitude and latitude entered and it will make its calculations from that reference point and move to the satellite you have selected. There is no saving positions in Usals mode, it calculates it every time.
Glad you got things sorted out How come you have your dish on your roof? That is got to be a killer....all that climbing

 

[skewed]

The dish is on the roof because in my front yard I have huge 200 year old live oak shading the whole thing. There aint a chance in hell of getting a signal there and because my house is"long" I only have 40-50 ft of back yard. With the peak of my roof I was not sure that I could getthe arc, my house faces due south. So the roof was a sure fire way of getting what I could get.


I just hit go to reference and it did not move. But when I was setting up the motor was zero and when I hooked it up I did hit got to reference and it moved about 1.5 degrees east then I zeroed in on 91 which is my true south sat. I noticed that it moved when I went up to aim it. I know most peeps dont belive in sat beepers but I use them all the time. In 5 mins I had 91 locked in, I have noticed that I am a little off but I was thinking that when I have more time I will get back up there and drive it to zero then re aim it without hitting "gp to reference" and see what happens. If this is the way that I should be doing it then please tell me as it has been a while since I set it up. BUt if your saying that "go to refrence" should drive it to zero and then from there I need to aim it I may have to bite the bullet and delete the sats and channels and start all over again. If this is the case I amight could have saved the motor in the first place.

 

[starman345]

I believe you need to have the receiver in Usals mode to use go to reference, I could be wrong there but give that a try. It should move to zero. Usals is easier to use to setup a dish, you don't have to search for all the sats, just find one, get it tuned as well as you can and you should be close enough to do the fine tuning....moving motor east, west on the pole, increasing, decreasing elevation on the dish.
I figured you had los issues with your dish on your roof, it made me tired just reading about all the climbing you were doing in your post

 

[gabshere]

well we've all made mistakes working with something ( and i love electronics ) i'm sure ... my problem seems that i can get them apart pretty easily but when putting them back together sometimes they don't fit right or have a few extra parts lol lol

for broke motor if its not totally ruined you can work on it in the house a couple feet from the receiver ..... it just might not give you the led lights now. work the motor back to the zero position and then try the reset pinhole on the motor.

some other things to consider for both motors

some motors act strangely being swapped between different receivers. always return to zero position when swapping out and some you have to reset the motor ( this looks like the case if swapping between a VS & Pansat receiver). all of my swaps have been from a coolsat to a coolsat. On another safe side, save your channel list before swapping out motors and preform a reset on the motor & receiver then load the channel list back to the receiver.

where we talked about putting up your c-band dish would be an ok spot for a KU dish to look over your roof if mounted on a pole about 6 ft above ground. This would save you from having to climb up to the roof to play with the dish i know we all like to adjust the dish

 

[skewed]

I have always saved my channel lists and my sat files as sometimes I would scan a sat and I could not save the changes so I would do a factory reset and then load the back up and re scan and it would work. I have learned the ways of the viewsat and I know what to expect. The best way that I can put it is I think that the vs does not reconize the channels or the sats anymore. I have to manually find them for it to do so. This weekend I will try to "go to reference" and see if it zeros out and also do a factory rest with the latest .sat file and see if that works better. Man I hope that is not the case becase I will loose alot of scanned channels also I will have re set up white springs and 129 and alot of others that are not in the factory file. As I said before a vs will not scan a sat or tps that are not in the list. It does not have a true blind scan, I dont care what you call it. I would use the 2500 because it does have a "true" blind scan but the remote issues just aggravate me. All I can say is once I get it set up I'm not moving it with another box until I get my HD replacement. Again THANK YOU GABSHERE for the motor. I am desperately thinking of a way I can repay you. We are wtching tv now and that is all that matters until this weekend when I try to fine tune it.