My BUD is some 50' from the house, and not visible from the V-box or receiver that are located in the basement. Doing routine maintenance on the dish was a challenge since it meant having a lookout to tell you where the dish was. Enter my hack.
My dish is connected back to the house using the standard ribbon cable with two coaxial lines. I only use one of the lines for the LNBF, and the other is a spare mounted inside of a demarcation enclosure. I disconnected the receiver input to the V-box and connected the second dish cable to the the input connector. Using the spare cable gives me a "loop-back" to the dish for control signals to the V-box.
At the dish I connected a hand-held DISEqC controller to the second cable, and used an adapter cable to apply 12 VDC (center-positive) to provide power. (I plug the connector into the utility outlet in my utility vehicle)
Using this hack, I can control the dish actuator from the dish! I can now see that the dish has been knocked off of "zero" from a storm last winter, and I can also "gun-sight" the western stop at the top of the ridge by our house. All in all, it makes things much easier.
I'll also be putting my analog signal strength meter inline so that I can confirm the arc from end-to-end in case an adjustment to elevation or declination is needed.
If all goes well, I'll have the dish tweaked before winter weather gets foul.
My dish is connected back to the house using the standard ribbon cable with two coaxial lines. I only use one of the lines for the LNBF, and the other is a spare mounted inside of a demarcation enclosure. I disconnected the receiver input to the V-box and connected the second dish cable to the the input connector. Using the spare cable gives me a "loop-back" to the dish for control signals to the V-box.
At the dish I connected a hand-held DISEqC controller to the second cable, and used an adapter cable to apply 12 VDC (center-positive) to provide power. (I plug the connector into the utility outlet in my utility vehicle)
Using this hack, I can control the dish actuator from the dish! I can now see that the dish has been knocked off of "zero" from a storm last winter, and I can also "gun-sight" the western stop at the top of the ridge by our house. All in all, it makes things much easier.
I'll also be putting my analog signal strength meter inline so that I can confirm the arc from end-to-end in case an adjustment to elevation or declination is needed.
If all goes well, I'll have the dish tweaked before winter weather gets foul.
