Openbox S9 USALS motor fine tuning

[rrob311]

I am trying to fine tune the motor with satellites with my new Openbox and the menus are not as friendly to me as my Sonicview. I am not impressed with the signal meters as well. Does anyone have any tips on how to bump the motor to get a better signal? I am used to the sonicview's ability to move the motor one step at a time and you can watch the signal/quality meter go up. Does the Openbox have a similar function?

 

[brentb636]

That is a nice function of the SonicView. I had an SV-1000 and SV-4000 and they both had motor control right from the remote. You should be able to "bump" the motor in Diseqc 1.2 mode, not USALS . Then hopefully , you'll find that your motor really should be a little more east or a little more west. In this case, you can "fudge your USALS setting to a longitude that is more to your liking. For Example, my HH motor is off true south by almost a degree, and I lie in the USALS settings on my longitude setting to compensate for it. In the spring, when it's nice outside, I'll adjust the motor mount again, and reset my USALS to my true longitude.

 

[AcWxRadar]

Rob,

Generally you cannot "fine tune" your setup with USALS in the manner that most are used to using DiSEqC 1.2 motor positioning.

USALS and DiSEqC motor control are two very unique and separate methods of controlling your motor, so you have to disect and and discuss them as separate functions.

It does not matter which option you use here normally, everyone has their own preference, but the main point in both is that your dish and motor MUST be aligned perfectly in order for either option to work well. The dish and motor and mast alignment set the foundation up for both methods. If these alignments are wrong, it doesn't matter how you "fine tune" your system. You will not have good results with either if the foundation is not correct.

DiSEqC motor control allows you to drive the motor east or west in steps or continuously until you "detect" a signal, and then draw in tight on it to peak the signal. Once you are satisfied with the quality level, you use the STORE or SAVE position feature in your receiver menu and that sets the memory within the MOTOR to record that position as P1, P2, P3, etc.... This location is recorded into a memory RAM or other memory device in the motor itself as position "X". The next time you command the reciever to drive to satellite "X" the receiver sends out a DiSEQc signal to the motor to access that stored position and drive there.

USALS motor control takes your latitude, longitude and the satellite orbital position in degrees and makes a calculation within the receiver with this data and then sends out a command to the motor to move so many degrees in a specific direction from ZERO and stop there.

Both methods are unique to their own rite. Both have their own advantages and disadvantages.

The only method to TWEAK or fine tune a system using USALS is to alter your geographic coordinates (site latitude and or longitude) or alter the orbital position of the satellite in the menus. Then, the next time you command the receiver to go to that position, it uses the new data that you supplied to make a new calculation and send out a unique command to the motor.

With DiSEqC motor control, you can tweak the motor position by using the move dish east/west until you promote the sat signal to the highest signal quality and then "STORE" this new postion in the motor as position P1 or P2 or P3... etc. The next time you want to access that satellite, you tell your receiver to command the motor to drive to one of those "stored" positions.

USALS: Dear MOTOR, please drive "X" number of (steps, degrees or counts) in direction "Y" from zero, home or where you are now to this new location.

DiSEqC: Dear MOTOR, please drive to the position "Z" that is stored in your memory.

RADAR

 

[chapelrun]

I am trying to fine tune the motor with satellites with my new Openbox and the menus are not as friendly to me as my Sonicview. I am not impressed with the signal meters as well. Does anyone have any tips on how to bump the motor to get a better signal? I am used to the sonicview's ability to move the motor one step at a time and you can watch the signal/quality meter go up. Does the Openbox have a similar function?

I'm having trouble with this too. I'm wondering now how I can get the best of both worlds. For example, I agree with rrob311 - - I love the motor control of my SV-HD8000 - - - I think I will make my SV-HD8000 my primary receiver for all the great motor control and use the Openbox my secondary receiver for the great blind scan and the S2 stuff out there.

 

[zamar23]

Could you guys post here pics of OpenBox motor control and sat TP signal level menus? Are they visible at the same time?

 

[chapelrun]

That is a very good question. Let me try to explain more clearly.

This first picture is the Antenna Setup screen which shows the AMC 21 setup on my Openbox using USALS.



Now if I change the Motor Type from USALS to DiSEqC 1.2 and select Motor Setting and drill down two screens you come to this screen.



This setup screen allow the user to store up to 63 motor locations. This seems to be the solution to the problem we are trying to solve, but as you move EAST or WEST it is hard to clearly see if your Signal Intensity and Signal Quality are going up or down. The fine motor control that we are used to in the SonicView are really not there so that I'm unsure if I have the very best signal possible coming from my motor. I think you can compensate for this some by making sure that your pole is completely plumb and the coordinates used in your receiver are as accurate as possible and the satellite orbital locations are as accurate as possible then of course using USALS does a pretty good job. For those of use (like me) who like to fiddle to make sure you have the very best signal using fine motor control it is a bit frustrating.

Currently today I only have my Openbox hooked to my TV but I may put the SV-HD8000 back as Primary and make the Openbox as Secondary.

Lastly, I still have not figured out a way to get my Openbox to drive all the way over to 15W. The SV-HD8000 had no trouble with this but the Openbox just doesn't want to go that far over.

The Openbox is a good receiver; it just takes a different philosophy about what level of control the user needs. Like I said I really enjoy fiddling with my receiver to get the best signal and I have not completely figured that out on the Openbox yet.

I hope this is somewhat helpful.

 

[Tron]

If possible, I would use a different receiver to fine tune the motor. From my experience, the signal quality meter on an Openbox never seems to go above 76Q, even on transponders that I get nearly 99 percent on using my old Pansat 2700.

I use the Pansat for dish aiming, but I'd rather use a Visionsat IV-200, which has a steadier meter. I have two Visionsats, but they are connected nicely into my system, and I don't like to pull everything apart when I aim dishes. The Pansat works well enough for aiming, but the meter is a bit wild.

 

[zamar23]

Thanks guys,

These are valid issues, and it makes sense to ask the manufacturer to have them fixed. Unfortunately, I don't have OpenBox at the moment to look through setup screens, but remember guys in the past did some testing and composed a good list of suggestions to fix Sathawk's firmware. I wonder, if someone can confirm, to what extent these suggestions are now implemented in Sathawk and OpenBox FWs? Anyone tried to install Sathawk's FW on OpenBox?

Chapelrun

Can you post pics of these 2 more screens, you have to drill down to get to Goto X screen? Does it have Goto 0 function and East & West Limits - did you try to change them? Talking of 15W, what are your Geo coords, and on what screen do you enter them in OpenBox? What happens, when you click East or West buttons on Goto X screen: do you have to click them again to stop the motor? It looks like this STB uses traditional USALS control: "store one sat position accurately - get them all via USALS" by changing channels.

One may wonder, why motor and DiSEqC switch control are weak in some STBs. This is not a matter of philosophy, other factors are in play, such as lack of coder experience, high coders workload, different production priorities based on markets demand, insufficient STB model memory for larger Setup UI, and lack of testing equipment and access to sat signals available in sales regions. For example, a smaller CN STB maker would usually test DiSEqC signals output of a STB by using a Scope, but not actual motor and various switches. Why - they don't have a motorized and complex switch matrix dish setup at their factory...because cutting costs of their R&D and production allows to offer lower wholesale prices. Now imaging a coder guy, who never had a motorized dish setup at home, and doesn't have a chance to play with it at work. He needs pretty wild imagination to get it right, despite looking at popular STB Setup examples. That's why suggestions of experienced users from different Continents like Ice, JimS and Lak7 posted are invaluable for them, if they reach the factory.

Speaking of coder challenges... Different motor makes and models have different Step-to-Angle ratio. How Sonicview 8000HD combats that? From what I read, the FW allows a user to position a motor via USALS at Setup, then fine tune the position in "abstract" STB angular steps, and once you click SAVE, the motor position is saved in STB in a number of "abstract" steps from motor "0". Next time you switch a channel, the motor is turned by a DiSEqC 1.2 command instead of USALS, which is used only at Setup. So the whole thing is a bit less straightforward than it looks like - to ensure repeatable positioning accuracy, since some motor models tend to accumulate USALS positioning errors over time.

 

[rrob311]

Ya the firmware I have says legitfta when you turn on the receiver. I put it in to get the missing satellites. I don't understand how the diseqc settings work or how to store them. I have seen snapshots from other receivers that seem to have similar signal meters to the SV. I just don't know which ones they are. It would be nice to find a page with snapshots from different receivers so I can decide which one I want to use for finding birds.