Newbie needs some HELP

[ratio]

Hi All,

I'm new to this FTA stuff and i'm having some problems with my motor and USALS

Can a damaged switch affect USALS moving the motor? I can move East and West manually no problem but it seems that when I choose USALS to tell the motor to move to a sat, nothing happens. Could it be the motor? the receiver? I'm sure my long and lat are entered correctly.

Thanks



Here's my setup:

36" dish
4 x 1 Chieta switch
STAB HH90 motor
Invacom LNB
Sonicview Elite PVR

 

[Lak7]

Can a damaged switch affect USALS moving the motor?

Remove the switch and see if it works properly.

How are you connected, it should be:
Receiver-------->Motor--------->DiSEqC Switch------->LNB

You should not have the DiSEqC in between the Receiver and Motor.

Always unplug the receiver when connecting or disconnecting a DiSEqC switch, or use the switch on the back of the receiver.

 

[AcWxRadar]

Hi All,

I'm new to this FTA stuff and i'm having some problems with my motor and USALS

Can a damaged switch affect USALS moving the motor? I can move East and West manually no problem but it seems that when I choose USALS to tell the motor to move to a sat, nothing happens. Could it be the motor? the receiver? I'm sure my long and lat are entered correctly.

Thanks



Here's my setup:

36" dish
4 x 1 Chieta switch
STAB HH90 motor
Invacom LNB
Sonicview Elite PVR

Ratio,

First step that I would do is remove the switch and wire directly from the receiver to the motor and then from the motor to the LNBF. If you have an Invacom QPH-031, you will need to connect to the linear output port.

That will rule out the switch entirely.

Then, you can concentrate on your setup menus.

RADAR

 

[FTABman0]

I would try to Reset the Motor then take the Switch Out and go that way first! This resets any motor limits that may be affecting it and loads the default satellite table to the HH90 and clears out any DiSEqC 1.2 positions stored . Make sure your Longitude and Latitude is right in your Sonicview Elite Setup settings and give it a go! Check coax for problems and make sure you have it plugged into the right spot into your STB. In your Elite set up Motor settings use USALS.


I have from time to time put it into the TV out or Loop Out connection by mistake. Easy to do! I have had a bad switch before but I think my motor still moved but there was no signal!

Remember, remove ALL POWER by switching the ELITE OFF BY THE SWITCH IN THE BACK or Unplugging From The AC Outlet before connecting any cables for this will damage switches or maybe you’re STB! I have a dead Coolsat 6000 just because I accidently shorted the cable to ground while it was on and I thought it was off!

Still no go, I would try a Factory Reset of your Sonicview to load the Out Of Box Experience! Might be something quirky with the receiver. You never know, it could be so much as a simple thing as that! If you are comfortable with flashing the unit, Get The Factory Bin (Find Latest From Sonicview) and give it a new fix of instructions!

The only pain of these two suggestions is the having to setting all the information back in the box and the Factory Reset makes on having to scan all those birds in again. I have a save feature for my satellites stored in memory on my CNX but have found out that that sometimes just brings the problem back after loading a saved file. About once every 5 or so months I Factory Reset the STB and start fresh anyway, even when there is no problems. I have found that it makes things just work better and all little problems go away!

Good Luck ratio and let us know when you got the problem fixed!

By the way To The Satellite Guys!!

B~Man

 

[ratio]

Progress but....

Thanks for all the suggestions

So far I took out the switch and I'm using the cheapo sonicview 4 x 1 switch that came with the receiver and I'm getting more movement from the motor.

What I dont understand is how the USALS work with Sonicview. I did a bit of reading and found out that its different from receiver to receiver. I just thought they all used USALS the same way...

Can I just use USALS to move around to all the satellites, signal or not?
Do I have to store each position before I move to the next sat?
Does the USALS work only when setting up the first satellite?
Do I have to go back to 0 before I search for the next sat?
I hit the "Go to satellite button" - blue and the motor goes to 0 and I hit the "go to reference button" - green and it moves to the satellite position.... confusing... does the motor need resetting? Manual says nothing.

Please advise.... thanks!

 

[Tron]

With USALS, all you should have to do is enter your latitude and longitude when you setup your first satellite. Each time you setup another satellite, simply select USALS for your positioner setting. There should be no need to re-enter your latitude and longitude. Also, there should be no need to store any positions.

 

[FTABman0]

1. Can I just use USALS to move around to all the satellites, signal or not?
2. Do I have to store each position before I move to the next sat?
3. Does the USALS work only when setting up the first satellite?
4. Do I have to go back to 0 before I search for the next sat?
5. I hit the "Go to satellite button" - blue and the motor goes to 0 and I hit the "go to reference button" - green and it moves to the satellite position.... confusing... does the motor need resetting? Manual says nothing.

Please advise.... thanks!

1. YES! Use USALS instead of DiSEqC 1.2 for all satellites in your list.
2. I think your Sonicview will do that automatically after each scan anyway.
3. No, you have to choose it for each satellite! Make sure that USALS is used for each satellite then save. It has to me manually selected each time for each sat.
4. No. Go To 0 is your will let the motor drive to the center 0 position of your motor. It is mostly used in resetting your motor.
5. Again, the Go To 0 moves the motor to the 0 or center position of the motor. A feature for getting the motor like it was out of the box on 0. On the last part of your question, I'm not really familiar with the Sonicview Elite's remote buttons, a little reading of the manual is in order here.


****Advice ****
YES reset the motor! Go into your setup settings and use the Go To 0 feature, make sure it moves to the 0 center part of your motor scale on your HH90. I do not have that motor but here is the PDF instructions.
After hitting the Go To 0 run out and make sure the motor is on the scale at 0. Now after hitting your Go To 0 button on your Elite and the motor is not on 0, drive the motor manually to 0 and do a reset. Follow the instructions of the PDF Manual above of the HH90 on resetting the motor to a tee! If you Go To 0 and the motor is at 0 on the scale you are good to go there. Check all settings, make sure the LNB is set up right in your settings and you should be golden. There is no need for a switch on 1 LNB. You never really said if you are using more than one but leave the swich out right now.

REMEMBER Any coax changes, switch changes LNB changes turn the POWER OFF YOUR ELITE by the switch in back or unplug it from the outlet! !!

Make sure your LNB settings are right:
Universal LNB's (freq. 10.7-12.75mhz) have a LNB LO frequency of 9750/10600.
Standard LNB's (freq. 11.7-12.2 mhz) have a LNB LO of 10750
DSS LNB'S (Using One For NASA) have a LNB LO of 11250

Iceberg Posted A Great Helpful List Of Things Here. It is required reading and Helpful!


Now on your Sonicview Elite Settings & Proper Setup maybe there is another member that has the same box to help you with the buttons on the remote to further assist you. I at least got you going in the right track on the motor settings!

Good luck and let us know the progress!

K E V I N

 

[ratio]

Motor has mind of its own!

Ok thanks FTABman0 for the suggestions, i'm just reading them today. I have tried a factory reset at 0 many times and its still bonkers...

This is what happened yesterday after I thought all was all ok...

I set the sat to the direction of TRUE SOUTH, put my long and lat in correctly (triple checked it) and told it to go to Nimiq 2 (which is 2.5 degrees of my true south based on dishpointer.com). Went out and turned the dish right and left and adjusted until quality was 100%.

The problem now is that the motor does whatever it wants. First of all, I have to tell it to go to REFERENCE in order for it to move to a satellite position....really weird and whenever I want to go back to zero, I hit the blue button - GO to Sat Position.... (my motor's gone bonkers!)

Anyways, there's more! I use USALs to tell it to go to 125 degrees (my long and lat are still correct) and it goes to 97 degrees. I tell it to go to 97 and it goes to 110, I tell it to go to 110 and it goes to 119. And best of all... those are not consistent and sometimes it doesnt move at all!

Whats going on? I just bought all this stuff brand new. I've spent so much time on this its starting to get frustrating and I'm wondering if the motor is bad, or the receiver is sending the wrong messages and I know its not the switch cause I'm using that new cheapo sonicview one - I believe the results were the same with the Chieta too!

What should i do? HELP!

 

[Lak7]

What receiver are you using?

To start, the Motor does not have a "brain", it only does what it's told, receiver does all the "math" for USALS.
In your USALS setting Triple Check you have 43.3 "North" and 79.9 "West" ("East" is usually the default) I just used Hamilton, Ontario for location.
Triple check that the Motor Lat Scale, not Elevation, is set to Your Lat - between 43 and 44 is good.
Power Down (unplug) and remove all switches, only connect the Receiver--->Motor--->LNB. For testing, I'd use the "C" port and Nimiq Sats.
Pick only 2 Sats to test with: Nimiq 2 @ 82 and Nimiq 1 @ 91, powerfull and close together.
Set both up exactly the same way, you only need to enter USALS info once:
LNB type: Standard / Single
LNB Power: On
LNB Freq: 11250
Motor: USALS

Have receiver "drive" to Nimiq 2 and confirm that you are there, scan some channels and check against Lyngsat. Once confirmed you are at 82 west, go to the Motor and look at the Directions Scale, you should be just a bit West of Zero.
Now have the receiver drive to Nimiq1 @ 91, go back and look at Motor's direction Scale, should be just past 10.
Post your results.

 

[AcWxRadar]

Ok thanks FTABman0 for the suggestions, i'm just reading them today. I have tried a factory reset at 0 many times and its still bonkers...

This is what happened yesterday after I thought all was all ok...

I set the sat to the direction of TRUE SOUTH, put my long and lat in correctly (triple checked it) and told it to go to Nimiq 2 (which is 2.5 degrees of my true south based on dishpointer.com). Went out and turned the dish right and left and adjusted until quality was 100%.

The problem now is that the motor does whatever it wants. First of all, I have to tell it to go to REFERENCE in order for it to move to a satellite position....really weird and whenever I want to go back to zero, I hit the blue button - GO to Sat Position.... (my motor's gone bonkers!)

Anyways, there's more! I use USALs to tell it to go to 125 degrees (my long and lat are still correct) and it goes to 97 degrees. I tell it to go to 97 and it goes to 110, I tell it to go to 110 and it goes to 119. And best of all... those are not consistent and sometimes it doesnt move at all!

Whats going on? I just bought all this stuff brand new. I've spent so much time on this its starting to get frustrating and I'm wondering if the motor is bad, or the receiver is sending the wrong messages and I know its not the switch cause I'm using that new cheapo sonicview one - I believe the results were the same with the Chieta too!

What should i do? HELP!

Ratio,

This is exactly what I have been talking about recently in some posts. The Sonic View 360 (Premier or Elite) seem to have a whacked program when it comes to USALS. Your responses were identical to mine (almost even precisely). Additionally, sometimes mine goes to the reference when I tell it to go to the sat and it goes to the sat when I tell it to go to the reference.

Try locating the satellites using the DiSEqC 1.2 positioning, recalculate and save the position. Hit about two or three satellites with this method, then try using USALS for the rest and see if that fixes it. If it does, then return the first two or three to USALS and see if it still works then.

I didn't want to mention it too often, because there could have been something wrong with just a few isolated units and I didn't want to sound like I was just against the brand.

AcWxRADAR

 

[jotruelove]

Aiming

What I have noticed is that if you tried to aim at, say AMC4, with previous inaccurate settings, even if you reaim and and rescan, the Sonicview USALS will use the PREVIOUSLY stored point reference (USALS + Scan data).

I found that if I deleted the previouslyl stored data, and then rescanned the bird, USALS worked great. If I did not delete the prior scans, USALS would go one way, and the reference button would take it another way.

I am not even sure what the reference botton is referring to.

Jim

 

[ratio]

AcWxRADAR I'm happy there is someone out there that understands what I'm going thru! FRUSTRATING . I'm a real newbie and its terrible!

But I wont give up yet. Gonna borrow a friends brand new motor and just connect it to the sonicview in the house just to see how it turns, in case something is wrong with my motor or receiver or cables. I was wondering if i accidentally turned the power off from the receiver while the motor was turning... i dont know! But even if I did that, i still cannot see why the Go to reference button would drive it to find the satellites all the time and the Go to Sat button always takes it to 0.

Will post after my testing...

 

[Lak7]

Remember to only connect to 1 tuner at the receiver.

 

[ratio]

Thanks Lak7. I'm gonna test by elimination. Does it matter that my Nimiq 2 82W is on Zero? Whenever I hit the Go to sat position from anywhere, it goes back to 0 and I see Nimiq 2 with 100% quality.

Oh and by the way I've check my lat and long 10x and i'm sure its WEST and the motor is at 43 and my elevation is around 38. Everything is plumb. I'm pretty sure i'm on the arc cause i remember seeing echostar 7, echostar 8,10, AMC4, galaxy 19 , AMC 5 etc. Its just that my usals is messed up and its frustrating to try and find everything manually and those sonicview buttons are opposite of what they mean

 

[Lak7]

Does it matter that my Nimiq 2 82W is on Zero?

Not yet.
Using the receiver, just bounce from 82 to 91. You are only trying to see if the Motor turns the proper amount of Degrees. No need to worry about quality, yet.
Remember to delete all channels too.
Again, you just want to see when the receiver tells the motor "move 9 Degrees West" is moves 9 degrees west?

 

[AcWxRadar]

Ratio,

You won't find anything wrong with your motor. A new motor will function the same with this receiver. I am very sure.

Also, remember this: There is a stored (preset factory file) of satellite angles within the motor. It is stored there. When you use DiSEqC 1.2 positioning, you locate the best position for reception by stepping the motor east or west. When you have it dialed in, you press the RECALCULATE/SAVE button and that overides the factory stored position within the motor and replaces it with your new one.

If you RESET your motor, it resets all the satellite positions stored in the motor to the factory table within the motor. Therefore you don't really need to use a brand new motor to test this, just follow the reset procedure of the motor and it will be the same as a new one out of the box.

Using USALS basically ignores these tables that are preset within the motor and calculates a command to drive the motor to a specific angular degree from the zero or reference position.

AcWxRADAR

 

[FTABman0]

Ok, it looks like this receiver is about as flaky as the CNX Mini I have!

Sometimes my motor will move to a satellite, let's say Hispansat 30W and sometimes it will go there and stay with no issues. Sometimes I move over to it will go then go back to E*119 or sometimes I have seen it go back to Nimiq 2 my true south! It is running the Factory Firmware since I bought it and I recently upgraded it to the latest firmware and it seemed to fix it but still it does quirky things I don't like! Another thing I hate with the CNX is that it NEVER remembers what LNB settings between linear and circular! Go to NASA and have to change it every time by hand, it sees all linear settings fine. Very frustrating!

As I stated in my posts on helping you was to the letter on Normal Setups out of the box and Normal I mean, what works with most of the boxes when you get them and what we all use for settings for flawless use and setup. One reason I mentioned for help from someone else that has and Elite to chime in and give ya some help or pointers.

It seems like there are issues with using USALS with this box as posted by AcWxRadar! Thanks Radar for the help there! I assume you are using the latest Factory Firmware? If not give that a go. Might want to try past Firmware Versions if you can find them by the Factory, sometimes you will find one that works as well or better than the latest!!

So with that, use DiSEqC 1.2 for the positioning command and see how that goes. I would until you figure out the problem 100% just take the switch out completely and use whatever LNB you need for getting your true south bird going straight to the motor. Still may be a bad switch so eliminate the possible problem there by just going direct to the LNB to the motor for TRUE SOUTH!

***Tip if you are going to try DiSEqC 1.2***

Start off by doing a fresh Factory reset of the Elite and working with a new STB! This always works as a last resort for me!

Moving to the motor does not have a brain; it has memory for DiSEqC 1.2 so I guess it kind of does! If it is able to store and recall to the motor using DiSEqC 1.2, then sure it does have a brain. If you use DiSEqC 1.2, then the motor will memorize the locations. With that said you can see how if you previously stored positions in you box settings and used DiSEqC 1.2 at one time you could be working on a vast set of problems for if the motor was set up wrong then positions stored using DiSEqC 1.2, of course it will move to the wrong positions it was stored too causing problems!

Wrong stored DiSEqC 1.2 positions and a double strike with the weird working USALS
Firmware on the Elite is going against you, this will be a task!

It is going to be trying many things to see what will work here to find a solution! Don't give up right yet!

In short I would start off fresh by going back to Factory Reset with the Elite, resetting the motor, make sure it is at 0, take the switch out go direct, make sure your settings are correct in the Longitude and Latitude menu, LNB settings are correct, make sure that you are 100% dish wise setup to the letter with elevation/declination settings correct and your able to get good signal and quality (QUALITY MATTERS NOT SIGNAL) on your True South Bird, use DiSEqC 1.2 instead of USALS and see if that works for you!

Hope this helps!

Sorry for not understanding your frustration completely for you were going by the letter before, sounds like it is one funny box to work with!

B~Man

 

[ratio]

The results are in...

So this is what we did just in the living room.

1. Did a factory reset on the SV Elite
2. Hooked up a brand new, never used, STAB HH90 (didnt use any LNB) cause I just wanted to learn how the receiver used USALS.
3. Put the correct LAT and LONG into the receiver, chose Nimiq2, chose USALS
4. Pressed the "Go to sat position"

Results

The motor didnt move. SO I pressed the "Go to REFERENCE button" and the motor moved clockwise about 10 degrees. Pressed the "Go to Sat" button and the motor went to 0. So I thought maybe they just messed of the programming for those 2 buttons. Well, not so...

Almost every sat I choose and choose USALS went to the Right of the 0. Even the ones I know should have been to the LEFT of my location. It almost seemed like the motor refused to go to the left of the zero. I had to choose sat at 177 E (and a couple of those that I know I cannot pickup from my location) for it to move over to the left and it only moved over by a few degrees. Some sats I chose that I know are close (Nimiq 1 and Nimiq 2) to see if the movement would be close to each other, and it was way off.

Conclusion
We concluded that the SV Elite doesnt work well out of the box with my STAB HH90 motor in terms of USALS. I still have to try what
AcWxRadar said "http://www.satelliteguys.us/member.php?u=44249Try locating the satellites using the DiSEqC 1.2 positioning, recalculate and save the position. Hit about two or three satellites with this method, then try using USALS for the rest and see if that fixes it. If it does, then return the first two or three to USALS and see if it still works then."

I do that and then post again.

By the way, does this experiment make any sense to you experts out there?

 

[FTABman0]

Try DiSEqC 1.2 for your positioning! See if that works!

B~Man

 

[ratio]

DiSEqC 1.2 setup

FTABman0

How do I use DiSEqC 1.2 to do my initial setup?

What I mean is... I'm used to trying USUALs to get the start position from TRUE SOUTH. How do I get Nimiq 2's position from DiSEqC 1.2?

I was thinking of going to dishpointer.com and getting the degree of the Nimiq2 sat from my true south ie Azimuth (magn.): 192.2° and then manually turning the dish 12 degrees (192-180) to the west and then trying to find the nimiq2. Is that right?


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