Newbie Troubles

[themango69]

Great ideas red and Lak. I agree that it should not take this long and the extra variables makes it more difficult

Because of the ease of trying, I'm going to try out Lak's suggestion first as this won't take me but 5 minutes to try. If this works, then obviously I won't need to go further. If this does not work, then I will go onto red's suggestions.

Just to make sure I'm correct with how the USALS works, I simply connect to 82W with lat/long selected and once I have this - I can manually move the motor and if I hit "go to reference", it knows how to go to 0 since that is what I saved in?? Along those lines, I always assumed I just get it to hit 82W on 0 and then I go and change Sat and TP info and then go to USALS and say to "go to Satellite", correct?

Thanks for everyone's patience.

 

[Lak7]

Think of "Go to Reference" as "Go to Zero" you should only select it when needing to bring motor to Zero.
Once you select USALS and enter Long And Lat info, you should not have to re-enter, it's a once and done thing.
When you want to scan a different Sat, just select the Sat in the Dish Settings Menu, make sure LNB, Motor and Switch setting are correct, and select scan. The receiver should automatically drive to the position and then start to scan. There should be no need to select "Go to Anything".

 

[satcom1]

Hey Mango,

Red has a good suggestion, crawl before you walk.

1. Your latitude scale does not match the strongest signal> your not plumb.

2. Your motor has probably stored a bunch of garbage in it now When you reinstall it do a zero reset acording to yu SG2100 manual.

 

[red2grass]

I read another post saying that motor has memories to store locations. Are you sure about this?
I could be totally wrong, but based on my EE background if I were to design a motor and receiver system, I would put all location information in the receiver not the motor. The receiver just sends out commands such as "move to zero", "move 1 unit east" and "move 1 unit west".
My understanding of USALS is that the receiver remembers where the current motor position is. e.g. 123W. If you want to switch to a channel on 99, it sends out a command of "move east 24 units". So if you switch a receiver, you'll at least do a move to zero because the current motor location is unknown to the new receiver.

Hey Mango,

Red has a good suggestion, crawl before you walk.

1. Your latitude scale does not match the strongest signal> your not plumb.

2. Your motor has probably stored a bunch of garbage in it now When you reinstall it do a zero reset acording to yu SG2100 manual.

 

[satcom1]

In the Digipower SG2100 Manual it discuses the factory installed satellite positions and how to change them. Some receivers have the ability to send save position commands to the motor memory. When a reset is done of the motor the orgninal factory sat positions are restored, mostly in asia. The reset should be done when the motor is at the zero position because that becomes the new zero. Some owners have had trouble be cause they reset the motor at some other position and then the mtor will not track properly.

Me too, EE

 

[delta_charlie]

Themango,

I have not read thru this thread but it should not take that much trouble and more than 100 messages even for a newbie to install a system. There are basically too many variables: receiver settings, motor, switch etc. If you put all of them at once without any prior FTA experience, it is going to be extremely hard and confusing. Here is my suggestion to start out simple:
1. remove the motor and switch, just do a fixed installation first.
---cut---

I would like to second red2grass on this.

With as much trouble as you are having with the motor I think it would make sense to take it off of the mast and take it inside the house.

Now go back up to the roof and peak the dish on G25 97w (Lots of open channels on this bird)

Kick back in the AC with a brew and enjoy G25.

Later after you have had a chance to have a little fun watching all the interesting and strange channels on G25 hook up the motor to the receiver (while still in the house and AC) and see if you can get it to move to the east and the west.

This needs to be sorted out before even thinking about trying to use the motor on the roof.

Hope this helps, DC

 

[themango69]

Thanks for your reply Delta and everyone else. I did get a chance to talk to Lak last night and he was very helpful with ideas. I got to flash the system to newest code and will now check tonite to see if it is moving or not. If it does not, I may do like you guys said and just take motor off and troubleshoot that. I probably won't be moving around alot regardless so it shouldn't be that big of a deal for now.

I do have a side question as I was thinking about this after doing alot of the channel scanning over the past week....

How do you guys manage your channels? For example, the way that I see how it works is that if you scan Sat1 and it has 50 channels - they auto number 001-0050. If you then go to Sat2 and scan it and it has 50 channels, they are numbered 0051-0100 and so on. So depending on the order of when you scanned them in and if you did a factory reset - how in the world can you keep it that something like Nasa is always on channel 0023 so you aren't always having to pull up the channel list to figure out where stuff is?

If I should put this in another thread, please let me know and I will do this as I don't want to confuse people and it may be beneficial to newbs like me (and others coming in fresh).

 

[themango69]

Everyone should be glad that I purchased a sat finder meter today at Radio Shack ($23.97). That should make things easier so I don't have to keep lugging crap back and forth! ha

Just wanted to update everyone.

 

[voomvoom]

Good Luck...!!
I never had any success with FTA with those "beep" meters, especially with a satellite next to or near a DBS satellite. But others hear have figured them out. I happen to be a bit lame on some things, and those "beep" meters are one of them. Hopefully you're not like me, and more like those who can use it with Great Success....!

 

[satcom1]

Hey Mango,

There should be a prize for someone with 130 posts and still not working.

You will find that your blink and chirp meter will not give you enough seperation information to tune your south satellite. But it will tell you that you are in the general area.

I noticed in your pictures that you mounted part of your bracket on the wood chimeny trim and part is in the wind. You should run over to Lowes and get a 3/4 inch plywood handy panel 2 foot by 2 foot. Paint it white and use 12 to 20 1 1/2" long deck screws to mount it to the chiminey. Then mount you bracket securely I used 3/8" bolts in all six holes.

 

[satcom1]

PS:

Mount hte bracket low on the board so that you can add side braces to you mast. This is a heavy dish and motor and when the next Tropical Storm comes through you'll have something left. I have a place in Cape Coral, Florida and be sure that your lead in is grounded before it enters your home. My dish there was hit by lightning several times.