AMIKO Amiko A3 Owners Thread

[Dee_Ann]

Yeah, this is flippin RUBBISH! I don’t know if it’s the A3 or the flippin motor.
I know some people have a lot of bad things to say about WSI which is where I got the motor.
I don’t know if they simply resold some chinese BS they got a container full of or if they actually designed this motor.

I do not know. I do not know what the problem could be because I do not have another motor to switch out and test.

All I know is that I can not use my KU dish on my new A3 and it’s bloody annoying !

If the motor works fine on the MicroHD and not the A3, well that’s a bit suspicious to me.

Should I just buy a new motor?

A Stab HH100 was mentioned. I’m thinking no, let’s go with the HH120 so I can put a bigger dish on it if I want to.
It says it will support a 1.2m dish up to 17kg which is about 37lbs. The dish I have on it now is 1m and MAYBE 20lbs.

Specs on my SG9120 motor say 350mA power draw. That should be well within the safe zone for the A3.
So there’s no reason it shouldn’t work.

Also, I have another idea. Rather than depend on a wimpy little motor and a wimpy little STB to control the wimpy motor,
how about just building a C-band style KU dish? I have a spare dish and I have the stuff left over from that junk WSI “special” 6’ dish.
I could mount the dish to that and then have a second ASC-1. Chain the two controllers, one controls the C-band dish and it uses odd numbers for the satellite positions.
The other uses even numbers for the KU dish.

Would that not work?

 

[Dee_Ann]

How about taking your A3 closer to the motor, and running it through a short piece of coax to see what happens?

It sounds to me like you have too much of a voltage drop for some reason that the A3 is sensitive to... 100ma difference in current rating between the MicroHD (500ma) and the A3 (400 ma) shouldn't make that much difference.

No way I can do that for the next few days, it’s raining, we have a mess coming in off of a failed storm in the Gulf so it’s going to be very wet here for several days, at the very least.
It’s pretty much a done deal that I can’t take any electrical stuff into the yard until sometime next week.


I don’t get why I can move the dish with it’s buttons while it’s getting power from the A3 but the A3 itself won’t move it.
If it were a problem with the motor malfunctioning and not recognizing the commands, why does the MicroHD have no problem moving it?

 

[primestar31]

No way I can do that for the next few days, it’s raining, we have a mess coming in off of a failed storm in the Gulf so it’s going to be very wet here for several days, at the very least.
It’s pretty much a done deal that I can’t take any electrical stuff into the yard until sometime next week.


I don’t get why I can move the dish with it’s buttons while it’s getting power from the A3 but the A3 itself won’t move it.
If it were a problem with the motor malfunctioning and not recognizing the commands, why does the MicroHD have no problem moving it?

Is the A3 hooked to the same coax that the MicroHD is hooked to? If not, why don't you try to swap the receivers over to each others cable, and see if the problem travels? They are probably sitting pretty close together, so that shouldn't be too hard a test to try.

 

[Dee_Ann]

This is the wire I’m using. It’s only 40 feet from my STB to the dish. Add another 6 feet inside the house and another 8 feet where is comes out of the ground to where it connects to the motor.
All in all, it shouldn’t be any more than 55 feet total. The connectors are new.

 

[primestar31]

I'd still swap receivers between where each of them is connected right now. That's the fastest check you have of everything. IF the problem travels with the A3, the problem is with the A3 itself. IF you now have the problem with the MicroHD, you know there's something wrong with the wiring, etc where the A3 used to be connected.

Once you know that, the rest is easy. Try to think of everything in a system as a "black box". If you don't narrow down WHICH black box section is causing the issue, you are just spinning your wheels and frustration levels.

 

[wallyhts]

Rick has some new stab HH120 he brought from italy for $149 plus shipping

 

[primestar31]

Rick has some new stab HH120 he brought from italy for $149 plus shipping

You aren't helping right now. She's liable to just jump and buy a new motor when it might not be the issue. If the MicroHD can move that motor perfectly, it's probably not a motor problem.

 

[wallyhts]

You aren't helping right now. She's liable to just jump and buy a new motor when it might not be the issue. If the MicroHD can move that motor perfectly, it's probably not a motor problem.

Lol, Just in case someone wants one before there gone

Not really been keeping up with this but if the mhd moves the motor and A3 does not ???

 

[primestar31]

Lol, Just in case someone wants one before there gone

Not really been keeping up with this but if the mhd moves the motor and A3 does not ???

It could still be an issue with the receivers respective wiring position in the chain. We won't know until she swaps them into each others place and we see what happens to the problem.

The funny part would be if they suddenly BOTH then work fine... lol. Then you gotta wonder "wtf"?

 

[Titanium]

Agree that it is highly unlikely to be a motor power problem, but DiSEqC level? I am curious if the motor is reliably receiving the DiSEqC commands. I haven't yet measured the 22KHz/DiSEqC amplitude of the A3. Primestar is right that the motor test should be using the same coax run.

The micro isn't a heavy lifter in the current department. If it can lift a motor the A3 should have no problem. The A3 current rating is is under-rated and by the manufacturer. I am running A3 120+ feet of solid copper core Quad to a GS120 and 90cm. Swings like an acrobat on a highwire! LOL!

 

[Dee_Ann]

I went and got my MicroHD from my bedroom where it’s been for a year or so and brought it into this room where the A3 is.

The wire comes up out of the ground and through the wall into this room. Another wire runs through the wall from this room to my bedroom and there is one of those screw in barrel splice (I think that’s what they are called) that connects the wire from outside to the wire that runs into my bedroom. THAT WIRE adds another 20 feet to everything. I’ve disconnected that extension wire and connected straight to the wire as it comes out of the wall in here. There is nothing else on it and doing this shortens the run by 20 feet.

I removed the A3 and put the MicroHD in here on that wire and it works fine. It moves the motor anywhere I want it to go and everything comes in as it should.

The A3, does not move the motor reliably. Most of the time, it won’t move it at all. 9 out of 10 times, it does not respond to commands to move to another satellite.

Something is wrong here. I want to say it’s the A3 but someone will say I’m having another red head episode of panic and frustration.

So rather than saying the A3 is not working right, I’ll say I do not know and leave it up to the experts to decide.

So far, this is not going well, it’s not looking good for the A3.

 

[Dee_Ann]

This is how it’s connected now, there are no switches of any kind, just a straight wire from the A3 directly to the motor.

I don’t know if this is an issue but I seem to have lost all of LPBS on 87w KU now.
It had been coming in fine on this dish and the MicroHD.

 

[primestar31]

How can the A3 and the MicroHD BOTH be connected to that motor at the same time with straight cable, and no switches?

If you've given us everything, it sure appears to be a A3 issue of some sort.

 

[Dee_Ann]

How can the A3 and the MicroHD BOTH be connected to that motor at the same time with straight cable, and no switches?

They are not. I put either one or the other on the wire. Not both at once.

 

[. Raine]

LPB might be blanked out for sports feeds right now, it's the right time of the year for that. I don't have a dish aimed at 87W for Ku, so I can't check to know for sure.

 

[primestar31]

Have you tried that master reset procedure on the motor as of yet? Mine didn't have the paperclip hole like Brian explain earlier. You had to center it, then remove the coax, press and hold both buttons at the motor, and then reconnect the coax.

As for LPB, another person has reported then mia also.

 

[Dee_Ann]

LPB might be blanked out for sports feeds right now, it's the right time of the year for that. I don't have a dish aimed at 87W for Ku, so I can't check to know for sure.

Oh, well I did discover a stupidball game on 87. No clue what it is except a bunch of men bashing skulls over the skin of a dead animal blown up with farts.
I can’t believe they would kill an entire group of channels for some nonsense like that.

I am getting their “slate” on 11804 but everything on 11807 is just completely missing. There’s no signal at all.
Anyway, I KNOW I am on the right sat, I’m getting the CNN and Florida stuff. A good strong signal.
The MicroHD is doing what it should do, going back and forth between 87 and 125 like a champ.

 

[Dee_Ann]

Have you tried that master reset procedure on the motor as of yet? Mine didn't have the paperclip hole like Brian explain earlier. You had to center it, then remove the coax, press and hold both buttons at the motor, and then reconnect the coax.

As for LPB, another person has reported then mia also.

Yes. I put the motor back on the MicroHD and told it to go to zero or reference.
Then I went into the yard and using a large metal carpenters square I held it against the motor body and the back plate of the dish (as I had done in the past) then pressed the buttons to align the dish PERFECTLY square with the motor, putting it perfectly, dead on zero. Then I pressed the reset in the motor with a paperclip and it blinked the LED to tell me that it had indeed reset.

I went in the house, shut down the MicroHD, pulled the power cord from it and waited about a minute then connected it to power and let it boot.
It’s working perfectly, I could not possibly complain about it’s performance when using the MicroHD.
I can move it to anywhere I want it to go and off it goes, every single time without fail.

 

[Dee_Ann]

I found scanned copies of the manual for my motor, I have misplaced the physical copy of it, long ago.
Fortunately for me, I scanned it in a long time ago and I found that.
I had to break it into two parts.

 

[primestar31]

Dee, really, as far as I can see the only test left is to take the A3 out to the motor and connect it with a shorter piece of coax and see if it suddenly works.

Even if it does, I'm not sure where that leaves you, except of course the possibility of a defective A3. 55ft of copper quad-shield coax is nothing. I'm running 85ft quad-shield copper to my wiring hub box, and then 30 - 40 ft MORE on either side to the various dishes. It works perfectly.