Dish advice needed

[rabbitseggs]

Hi guys. I am getting a Vu+Solo in the next day or so. At the moment my dish is driven by an old Topfield receiver. Rather than buy a V Box for the Vu+Solo I was thinking of using the Topfield to drive the dish. Am I likely to have problems doing this or should I invest in a V Box. I just thouight it would be a good way to recycle the Topfield!! Your advice would very welcome.

[TK4|2|1]

What type of motor is it?
If its a diseq motor the solo is more then capable of driving it on its own.


Sent using sorcery and the magic interwebs

[echelon]

I will assume its a 36v motor so yes using your old box is one method of driving the motor and dish and then switch to standby and use its loop out to the new box so you can see the channels on the chosen satellite. its not ideal as you are using 2 boxes and 2 remotes whereas using a vbox only requires you to tell the main box where to go and the vbox does it for you automatically, meaning you only need the main sat box remote

a slight alternative to the above is to have a twin lnb on the motorised dish and have a connection to each box, using the old Toppy to drive the dish using one feed and the other feed goes to the new solo box (or any other box you buy or own)

the vbox is the best solution, but costs money, so using your old toppy to drive the box will suffice but means using 2 boxes and 2 remotes and having the toppy on standby once the chosen satellite has been pointed at, and woken up again next time you wish to change sats

[satpaul]

Buy a V Box you will nothing but trouble doing it the hard way with Topfield less than £25 on flee bay

Sell your Topfield to pay for it

[Mickha]

I'm still using my old Echostar 3600, to drive my 36V motor, without any problems, I did add a twin LNB, and new cable run, to attach to it, but this wasn't necessary.

[donki]

Sorry to rock the boat but I used to use a V-Box and suffered no end of signal degregation(yes, it was quite a long run). In the end I gave up and invested in a new Motor. Problems solved. Choices, choices.

[rabbitseggs]

Thanks for the advice everone. Echelons comments mirror my set up. I have a quad LNB (only use two) on a 1 metre Channel Master dish, one feed to the Toppy and the other to a Free********nisat. I intend to ditch the Technisat and replace it with the new Solo. On balance then, I will use the Toppy to drive the dish (it is very accurate). Thanks again.

[sstylianou1976]

I agree with echelon when I ditched my old receiver I bought my VU+ Solo with a VBox 2 is more sensible that way and easier to run your dish no point having another box to steer the dish as is just meaningless so his advice is sound so far I had no problems with it plus a VBox costs usually £50 these days or probably less depending where you shop so is not that expensive Superjack is very good so is worth it.

[rabbitseggs]

Hi All
I stayed with using my Toppy to move my dish. However I now have other problems and need your help. They may or not be related to using the toppy. I have installed blackhole OK and configured (Advanced) the tuner on Astra 19e following the instructions given in "Dummies Guide to setting up Vu+ Solo". I have used the "VBox" instructions as that seem appropriate. I started with Astra 19e and all is fine, downloaded the channels Ok using auto scan. I then moved the dish to 16e. I configured (Advanced) the tuner to 16e and set the LNB to 2 and pressed OK to store. When I came to do the auto scan it wanted to scan 19e again. Try as I can I cannot find away to get my Solo to scan the configured satellite. It will only scan 19e regardless of the dish position/ satellite selected. I have tried a factory reset but that has not helped. What have I done wrong? By the way I did try to configure the Solo before loading Blackhole and had the same problem. I thought I might have more luck using Blackhole to configure the receiver. But no. If your advice is to uninstall Blackhole how do i do it. Sorry to be a pain but please help.

[cosworth4x4]

try manual scan / single sat / 16 e

see how that does.

[echelon]

when you set the box up you either select single sat , or a multi sat setup (usually up to 4 sats using simple diseqc), or a motorised setup , and the tuner being used

then for a second tuner you either set it to mimic the first tuner or something different instead (if you have a solo2 and not a solo)

so the point here is to setup the tuner A for how you wish it to be , one or more satellites, or a motorised setup with multiple satellites

once you have done this , tuner B can be set to mirror tuner A , or not , as required, if you have a solo2 (ignore for a solo)

so in your case, if its a solo, decide on the configuration first , and stick to it, clearly it cannot be set for a single satellite if you wish to use more than one satellite, so set it according to how many satellites you are using , ie:- one , two to four , or motorised, in your case I suspect motorised (ADVANCED) is what you require and setup as per a vbox (even though you are not using a vbox)

I believe an autoscan will want to scan all the positions loaded on the box, so am not surprised that it wishes to start with 19e again, so as cosworth points out , use manual scanning of each sat in turn instead of autoscanning every sat in your list

also, I am not sure why you are scanning when there are premade channel lists by members like catseye containing the satellites all setup ready for you and I to use. I havent actually scanned a satellite for years as I tend to use a premade list and adapt it for my own needs instead of starting from scratch and my linux boxes all contain a modified catseye list, this is clearly mentioned in sections 4 and 4a of the dummies guide

[cosworth4x4]

i have to admit i still do it the long way ,even thou i know there are channel lists available,prob just a bad habit from days when we did not have it easy to be able to just upload a list :001_302:

but believe me its very long on a auto scan (with a solo2) last auto scan i did was well over 6 hours 40 east to 45 west.

[Jimdefruit]

If you are getting a VU+ then I would strongly recommend that you go for the V-Box. The use of the EPG to set recordings in advance needs the VU+ to move to the correct satellite.

[tr8.]

Sorry to rock the boat but I used to use a V-Box and suffered no end of signal degregation(yes, it was quite a long run). In the end I gave up and invested in a new Motor. Problems solved. Choices, choices.

I have 2 dishes both with VboxII and the runs are massive.
The recievers are in Lounge and Sitting room.
The VboxII are in the loft.
They cables then goes into the roof of the garage, down the garage ( this is 58' Long), down the wall and into a 2" pipe that runs at least 80' down the garden to the dishes.
I use the best quality cable I could buy some 20+ years ago but can say there is no noticeable loss, I pick up 7w on H and that is a weak signal in uk. not great on the 1.2m in winter better in summer, but no issue on the 1.8m

[rabbitseggs]

hello again Thanks for all the advice. I now have a full channel list. Now the request for even more help. I have downloaded the latest Cccam package and tried to load onto my solo using Vu Control Centre. I get back the message " Cannot install package enigma2-plugin Cam-cccam root@vusolo/Var/Volatile/temp" What am I doing wrong? Sorry to be a pain but I do need help.

[rabbitseggs]

I am nuts. I was loading up emigma files after installing Blackhole. I see that the Blavkhole files are .rar. How do i upload there using Vu+ Control centre?

[rabbitseggs]

Sorted.