Mercury II and Gbox

[PKII]

I haven't messed with this for a while so I may have forgotten if this is possible or not.

I have a Fortec STar Mercury II FTA it says it has Diseqc 1.2 and my SatHawk GBOX says it will work with that DiSEqC 1.2 receivers.

In the connection diagram in the Gbox book it shows that it can be hooked to either a Actuator or HH mover. I have never been able to figure out how to get it to work.


Will any actuator work? Or is a special one?

Where do you plug the Gbox into the receiver?

Figured it out sorta. ; )

 

[turbosat]

Isn't that made to be a stand-alone positioner? I don't recall hearing about one being connected to a receiver, just a motor..

 

[PKII]

Isn't that made to be a stand-alone positioner? I don't recall hearing about one being connected to a receiver, just a motor..

I got it to work some but not figured out how it moves to the satellite I want yet. Re-finding satellites now. I reset the box.

 

[Lak7]

DiSEqC 1.2 commands are sent over the LNB cable
You must manually Drive the Dish to find the Sats, and Save the Position on the GBox.
I don't have a Mercury receiver, but set the Motor option to 1.2, have a HOT TP selected, Drive the Dish until you get a Lock, Save position.

 

[PKII]

DiSEqC 1.2 commands are sent over the LNB cable
You must manually Drive the Dish to find the Sats, and Save the Position on the GBox.
I don't have a Mercury receiver, but set the Motor option to 1.2, have a HOT TP selected, Drive the Dish until you get a Lock, Save position.

Thanks. Strange how the longer you have something things you never understood about it comes to light. I thought someone told me a while back I had the wrong equipment but it seems I don't. Just not the knowledge of how to get it to work.

 

[B.J.]

One thing about the Mercury II is that diseqC-1.2 is not fully implimented. Unless you are willing to use a binary editor on the channel data file, it will not be possible to save sat positions using the gbox thing then use the Mercury to send the dish to the sat. With the Mercury, you MUST issue the save commands from the Mercury, after finding the sat, after which it should send the proper command to the box.
Also, if you EVER delete ANY satellite on the Mercury, it will scramble all diseqC-1.2 positions for sats stored after the one deleted. Again, you can fix this with a binary editor, but it's a lot of work. None of these problems existed with the older Fortec receivers, like the lifetime and ultra, and don't exist with receivers that have a functional channel editor.
The basic problem is that the Mercury doesn't have any way to specify which satellite position number corresponds to which satellite. It decides for itself which number goes with each sat when you save the position via the receiver. But if you save the sat position with another receiver or with an external dish mover box, there is no way to enter this information.

 

[PKII]

I tried to figure it half the day yesterday. I'm ready just to forget trying to get it to work. Maybe when ever I break down and buy a new receiver I will get one that works without reprogramming anything.

 

[Sadoun]

PKII

Whenever you try again, you can use the GBox independently of your receiver. Just use the RC that comes with it to move the motor and store locations.

 

[Tron]

PKII

Whenever you try again, you can use the GBox independently of your receiver. Just use the RC that comes with it to move the motor and store locations.

I didn't know that operation independent of the receiver could be done with DiSEqC positioners such as the G-Box... That's good to know. I will be ordering one of these soon, since the next project after PortaBUD is my motorized Perfect 10 7.5' ...

 

[B.J.]

I didn't know that operation independent of the receiver could be done with DiSEqC positioners such as the G-Box... That's good to know. I will be ordering one of these soon, since the next project after PortaBUD is my motorized Perfect 10 7.5'

But unless you use a binary editor on the channel data file, and/or do a heck of a lot of thinking about trying to getting the receiver to save (with coax removed) to the same diseqC-1.2 sat number, you will not be able to move the dish via DiseqC-1.2 if you use the G-box to save the positions, because if you then try to save a position via the receiver, it will typically save it to a different sat number, typically wiping out ones you've saved via the box. Basically, if you want to use the Mercury to control one of those Gbox/Vbox things via diseqC-1.2, you have to store via the Mercury, not via the box, and you can never delete a sat after that. With other receivers, you just need to make a list of what sat is on what sat number on the box, then tell the receiver to use number 1,2,3,4, etc for that sat. With the Mercury, you don't have that option, but it CAN be done with a binary editor, but it is a somewhat complicated task if you aren't good with hex numbers and binary editors.

There is a discussion of this over at Sadoun. See
Mercury positioner numbers save location in ch. file. - Sadoun Tech Forums

I posted a program to view the diseqC-1.2 sat numbers there, but the link has changed to:
http://www.eskerridge.com/bj/sat/bjbinview.zip
There was another thread that had some related info there too, but I couldn't find it.

Also of interest is:
HELP! Mercury II Editor does not work! - Sadoun Tech Forums

Also, you might search for posts by a bill190 there, as he posted about several issues with the Mercury, and he also notified Fortec, but Fortec never did anything about the issues to my knowledge.

I have sucessfully used a binary editor to edit the diseqC-1.2 numbers in a channel data file, to restore what sat numbers correspond to what sats, but it is a very complicated job.

 

[Anole]

Since the thread on Sadoun's Tech forum was from two years ago, you'd think Fortec could have worked the fix into the firmware by now.
Haven't they released two 'new' receivers since then, using the same PCB and firmware?
What's the phrase? "Resting on their laurels"?

I believe they owe us a new HD receiver, too, and it'd damned well better not come to market with this bug! -