motorized ku system problem

[icu1954]

hi guys,i am having a problem with my motorized ku system which is an orasat 5.0 receiver with a 1 meter dish and a sg9120B dish motor.It was operating fine,locating all the sats perfectly,then all of a sudden the receiver would freeze up when i would go to another satellite as soon as the signal would try to lock in.I would have to turn off my receiver then turn it back on and it would lock in.Now the problem is i can't get the motor to move the dish using my remote from inside my home,i can go out side and move the dish by pressing my manual button located on the dish.It moves fine from east to west.I have check all the settings on my receiver and everything is in order,I have reset the motor by the reset button,light flickers red and turn to solid green.when i command the dish to turn from inside my home,it says antenna moving but in reality it is not..i need some advice guys

 

[turbosat]

Receiver memory overload, perhaps? Is your receiver full of empty transponders-if you blind scan a lot it will fill up the memory before long. Might be time to factory-reset the receiver and start again. Firmware can get corrupted too, might need to reload its firmware. Try the reset first though, that may bring you back.

 

[icu1954]

sg9120b problem

yes it is full of empty transponders and i will take your advice on starting from scratch..thanks

 

[turbosat]

That may be the trouble. If that receiver has an easy way of deleting old transponders you can do that, but it can get tedious. Memory problems cause weird behaviour in these little boxes!

 

[AcWxRadar]

hi guys,i am having a problem with my motorized ku system which is an orasat 5.0 receiver with a 1 meter dish and a sg9120B dish motor.It was operating fine,locating all the sats perfectly,then all of a sudden the receiver would freeze up when i would go to another satellite as soon as the signal would try to lock in.I would have to turn off my receiver then turn it back on and it would lock in.Now the problem is i can't get the motor to move the dish using my remote from inside my home,i can go out side and move the dish by pressing my manual button located on the dish.It moves fine from east to west.I have check all the settings on my receiver and everything is in order,I have reset the motor by the reset button,light flickers red and turn to solid green.when i command the dish to turn from inside my home,it says antenna moving but in reality it is not..i need some advice guys

ICU,

When your system (your SG9120B motor) appears to fail on you... did you look to see if the fault LED is lighted or flashing on your motor? Or is it green indicating OK? Next time this happens, confirm this. If the motor is registering a fault, it may be a motor only problem and you can work on the trouble from that direction. If the motor LED is still green, then the problem is probably with the receiver or the path of the signal between the receiver and the motor. You are going to have to break it down into sections to troubleshoot it and isolate the problem area.

Do you have another receiver to play with? That would be a good option for troubleshooting. Substitution of known good components into an inoperative or troublesome system is a great troubleshooting technique, as long as you don't see smoke! Yes, smoke and loud explosions are bad things. LOL Fire too, yeah, that's a bad result. You don't want to see fire either. Okay, okay... You know what I mean.

I am trying to lighten your spirits regarding this issue. Any failure is bad news (I have one of my own right now), but you just have to take it all in stride.

Not knowing what the exact failure could be, I can only guess at possible repairs - too many options here. Without spending time with your system and components personally, I wouldn't know it either. However, we can probably narrow the possibilities down through the art of some artistic troubleshooting techniques and maybe even a little cheating!

Can you have someone inside your home click the remote to move the dish while you are out at the dish to listen to it? Checking to see if there is a mechanical problem?

Oh, and have you DISABLED the software limits?

RADAR

 

[icu1954]

motorized problem

hi radar,yes i had my wife click the remote while i watched the green led on the motor and the light did not blink or change colors or no sound from motor,like i said i can move the motor by the button.It all started by dish moving back to zero position,sometimes dish wouldn't stop moving,sometimes dish would only move so far etc....lot of weird stuff..now no responding to the remote.I did a factory reset but the funny thing i did not lose any satellite info,all i lost was my diseq settings and longitude and lattitude settings,so now where do you think i need to go from here?

 

[SatelliteAV]

Try taking the receiver out to the dish or run a temporary coax between the receiver and the motor. You may have a damaged coax cable or corroded fittings that prevents the weaker DiSEqC signals from reaching the motor. Also be sure that there are no switches, amplifiers or any other device in the coax line.

Perform a reset on the motor while it is on the zero position.

Perform a factory reset on the receiver.

 

[AcWxRadar]

Try taking the receiver out to the dish or run a temporary coax between the receiver and the motor. You may have a damaged coax cable or corroded fittings that prevents the weaker DiSEqC signals from reaching the motor. Also be sure that there are no switches, amplifiers or any other device in the coax line.

Perform a reset on the motor while it is on the zero position.

Perform a factory reset on the receiver.

This is exactly what I would test next, too.

RADAR

 

[icu1954]

motorized problem

hi radar, this is a new system,about 3 months old.I have checked my coax cable,no damage and checked my fittings...clean...i am about to say it is my receiver.The orasat don't have any type of support that i could find and i have a captive works receiver that i can't get to work with the universal remote that i bought for it,but all of the panel buttons work.Do you think i could use it to test the motor with,I bought it on ebay but after i could not get the remote to command the receiver i just put it in the back room. Its a captive works 600

 

[turbosat]

icu, if your box won't clear out all the channel/tp info by factory default or reset, you'll just have to go through your satellite list deleting the old info of all old transponders. Hope you checked the menus good, there may be more than one option for 'factory reset or default". I know several of mine have more than one place in the menus to do that, one allows "Delete all channels", but that doesn't clear out transponders-just the channels. Then in another menu it lists Factory Default & System default too. Factory default clears mine completely out (Icon) but your receiver might call it something else. Might be hard to use the other receiver to test the motor, if you don't have a working remote for it. If the front-panel buttons allow access to all menus, it might be possible, though slow.

 

[AcWxRadar]

hi radar, this is a new system,about 3 months old.I have checked my coax cable,no damage and checked my fittings...clean...i am about to say it is my receiver.The orasat don't have any type of support that i could find and i have a captive works receiver that i can't get to work with the universal remote that i bought for it,but all of the panel buttons work.Do you think i could use it to test the motor with,I bought it on ebay but after i could not get the remote to command the receiver i just put it in the back room. Its a captive works 600

Before you do anything else, follow the instructions that Brian (SatelliteAV) mentioned. Just inspecting the cables and connectors does not assure you of anything. What appears electrically healthy to the eye, is totally different from how it actually operates, especially for the high frequencies of the satellite signals.

If you can get a remote for the CW-600, that should be a good help. I have a CW-800S and it seemed to work ok, if I recall. Having a second receiver to test with is a benefit, but then you also need to know that it was fully operational as well. You wouldn't want to put a bad box in the circuit to troubleshoot a suspicious box with. How would you know what it is telling you unless you knew for certain that the box was good? So be careful here.

RADAR