DISEQC motor not responding problem

JanKing

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TM 1500 CI+ with Diablo 2.3, DM500, TM motor, 1db LNB on 80cm dish. 55E to 15W then trees
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I have studied a number of posts on this and they all ended inconclusively (including one of mine!) – either with no solution or suddenly finding that everything works again – mysterious!

PROBLEM – Technomate 5500 CI Super converted to Next YE2000 with Meconic DISEQC / USALS motor. At first all was fine (in fact very good for a few months) but them the motor occasionally failed to respond. Disconnecting the box overnight fixed this. Now it always fails and I have no control over the motor from the receiver.

ATTEMPTED SOLUTIONS
1. Connections all good. Motor moves when commanded from button on it.
2. Reset motor at 0 degrees, reset motor and factory restore of box, revert to older firmware, try USALS rather than DISECQ all to no avail. (all ideas suggested in other posts).
3. Green pilot light on – flashes orange when resetting OK.
4. Tried moving motor from blue position button on remote and from DISECQ setup menu, including Goto ref etc etc.

Has anyone any further ideas?

I do not have access to another receiver or motorised dish so can’t be sure which is at fault but I strongly suspect the receiver. I think I am right in thinking that the motor may rely on its own software for USALS (which is not available anyway in the current Next firmware) but that DISEQC relies purely on commands fron the receiver.

One thing I haven’t sussed but a random play with the settings had no effect. In the USERDATASE.UDB there are settings per sat for Motor Position and Motor State. These are set to 5000 and 0 respectively. Tried changing 0 to 1 etc but no effect. They seem to be the same on UDB’s copied when the system was working so I think they are a red herring but I have run out of ideas!

JK
 

JanKing

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My Satellite Setup
TM 1500 CI+ with Diablo 2.3, DM500, TM motor, 1db LNB on 80cm dish. 55E to 15W then trees
My Location
Sunny Scotland
I've driven the dish manually to Eutelsat W3 at 7E for DT and using monoblock second LNB for Hotbird - I thought the signal strength might not be good enough for a monoblock to do better than 19 & 13 deg here in sunny Scotland but it's working. Still got to find a solution to the motor not responding problem though!
JK
 

JanKing

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TM 1500 CI+ with Diablo 2.3, DM500, TM motor, 1db LNB on 80cm dish. 55E to 15W then trees
My Location
Sunny Scotland
I have had the DISEQC motor checked and it is all in good order. The problem must be with the receiver as I've already eliminated the cable from the equation.
As the motor was dismounted I put a monoblock on the dish and note that I can only change sats on a Horizontal TP. I think that this uses 18 volts which suggests that the V at 12V is low or something . . . . I'm sure there are some clues if anyone has any ideas.
Thank you for reading my monologue!
JK
 

rolfw

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Technomate 5402 HD M2 Ci, DM7000s, Transparent 80cm Dish, Moteck SG2100 DiseqC motor, lots of legacy gear. Meters: Satlook Digital NIT, Promax HD Ranger+ spectrum analyser.
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Berkshire
Certainly sounds like the receiver Janking, have you tried measuring the voltage leaving the receiver and at the LNB end of the cable?
 

JanKing

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TM 1500 CI+ with Diablo 2.3, DM500, TM motor, 1db LNB on 80cm dish. 55E to 15W then trees
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Sunny Scotland
Will be a few days before I can get out there with a volt meter - should I check the voltage across the co-ax with nothing connected expecting to see H=18v and V=12v?
Thanks for the quick response (to a protracted thread!)
JK
 

rolfw

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Technomate 5402 HD M2 Ci, DM7000s, Transparent 80cm Dish, Moteck SG2100 DiseqC motor, lots of legacy gear. Meters: Satlook Digital NIT, Promax HD Ranger+ spectrum analyser.
My Location
Berkshire
Yes, the vertical should probably be 13 and a bit though.
 

JanKing

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TM 1500 CI+ with Diablo 2.3, DM500, TM motor, 1db LNB on 80cm dish. 55E to 15W then trees
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Sunny Scotland
but it didn't last! Sunny last night so I tried the motor on a fly-lead and to my surprise it behaved as it should, so I reinstalled the whole kit and for a few hours all was back to normal. I saved all the sats I can get from 15W to 19E and cheerfully called it a day. I 'couldn't believe it'!

This morning - nothing - ie. back to square one with no motor movement. Tried leaving the box off the mains - still nothing. SNAFU. I took your advice and the voltage on vertical TP's at the motor is 13.22v and for horizontal 18.06v. On my sat meter I can also see the 22khz tone indicator flash when I try to move the dish from the receiver. Everything LOOKS OK!

I have run out of ideas - the only thing I have not been able to do is to try my receiver with a known working motorised set-up (basically because I don't know anyone with one!).

Any further insightful sugggestions gratefully accepted . . .

JK
 

JanKing

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TM 1500 CI+ with Diablo 2.3, DM500, TM motor, 1db LNB on 80cm dish. 55E to 15W then trees
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Sunny Scotland
Aplogies - double posted
 

JanKing

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TM 1500 CI+ with Diablo 2.3, DM500, TM motor, 1db LNB on 80cm dish. 55E to 15W then trees
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Sunny Scotland
I finally checked the motor out with another receiver and had the same negative result.
In the end I purchased another motor (Technomate this time for the sake of being able to argue compatability with my receiver if further probs arose). This arrived today - up it went - on with the power and back in business. Fantastic!

CONCLUSION (hopefully no further update will be required!). Original motor would recover if left off power for significant periods of time. (eg. long enough for Maplins tech department to declare it OK after a week and for it to work for an evening when it returned home) It was taking the mickey big-time!! :-rofl2 I don't know if there are capacitors or something similar in the motor controls but it was if it failed when on power for a period and would 'drain' over time if off.

Anyway a conclusion at last and maybe a pointer to anyone else with similar unresolved issues. 212 of you had looked in on this so even if 1 of you is helped it would be worth all the hassle I've had!

JK (off to play!)
 
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