158
TELE-satellite International — The World‘s Largest Digital TV Trade Magazine
— 1 -12/2012
—
www.TELE-satellite.com
sembly and used it to control not only
the DiSEqC 2/1 switch, but also the two
motors.
Before I even started the previously
mentioned rough alignment based on
the Moteck user manual, I was able to
receive several different satellites just
by moving the two motors! Of course,
it doesn’t make much sense to leave
the antenna setup in this state since for
each satellite you’d then have to move
both motors. But it was clear that this
idea would work.
So the first step was to roughly align
the system without a fine adjustment
of the antenna and Motor 1. The goal is
to remain independent of a fine-tuning
adjustment so that it won’t be neces-
sary to climb on the roof after a storm.
Additionally, each satellite should be
ideally setup for both motors so that
maximum reception is possible. Motor
2
was configured in such a way that
the 0 degree position represents what
it would be like if Motor 1 had been
mounted directly on a vertical mast.
Now it was time to generate a proce-
dure for a receiver to control both mo-
tors. A method had to be found where
the receiver would first switch to DiS-
EqC A and drive Motor 1 to the desired
satellite after which it would switch
to DiSEqC B and move Motor 2 to the
stored position of the same satellite.
Since something like this would hard-
ly be possible without some program-
ming in the Linux firmware or the actual
design of a plug-in, I had to come up
with something simpler. My reference
receiver, the AZBox ME, offers more
possibilities than normal satellite re-
ceivers thanks to the Linux operating
system.
After several attempts, I came up
with the following operation: a dummy
channel (Motor 1) switches to DiSEqC
A while a second dummy channel (Mo-
tor 2) switches to DiSEqC B. Since two
identical motors are being used, the
same satellite table is used for both of
them so that Motor 1 stores the east/
west position and Motor 2 stores the el-
evation.
The actual operation would work like
this: if, for example, you want to switch
from one channel on ASTRA 19.2E to
another channel on HISPASAT 30W,
you first select dummy channel 1 and
then the desired channel on HISPA-
SAT. The antenna will then turn to the
west. Now if you also want to set the
elevation position of the antenna, you
Example of the
enormous range
provided by using
two motors:
Minimum elevation
(
even lower was
possible)
Normal position
Maximum elevation
(
higher was possible,
but it was of no use)
Back down