New source to build your satellites.xml files

Huevos

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My Satellite Setup
57E to 58W, C-band and Ku, DVB-S2, 4:2:2 and blindscan.
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38.5ºN, 0.5ºW
RimaNTSS said:
Question to author of this great product: How often you update database? And second question: On 36.0E Eutelsat 36A/36B there are circular and linear transponders, basically similar to C and Ku band they should be received with separate LNBs. How can I better make separation between Circular and Linear transponders?
Weekly seems reasonable to me. If you look at OpenViX on GitHub you can see the weekly commits on there. That file is active transponders and contains about 4000 entries. Typical changes for a week are 40 additions and 40 deletions. Many are minor changes and the majority are in C-band.

hxxps://github.com/oe-alliance/oe-alliance-core/commits/master/recipes-multimedia/tuxbox/tuxbox-common/satellites.xml

Circular and Linear transponders: only a problem when the satellite is mixed. Most people in western Europe running Ku band are not within range of a circular polarised footprint so to be honest I thought it just wasn't worth the bother to code this. And then for C-band everyone is doing something different (some take the plate in and out, others run 2 LNBs, etc) and anyway the majority of sats don't run mixed polarisation (at least not for the same audience), so it has been left to the user to edit these few cases by hand to 2 positions. But 2 positions and USALS aren't compatible anyway. So if you wanted to use USALS for the offset LNB you would need to know the position of the second LNB before you edit the satellites.xml file so the dish stopped at the right place, and this would be unique to every setup.
 

deepbluesky

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My Satellite Setup
Octagon Quad Optima OQSLO @ Laminas OFC-1100 @ Powertech DG-380 @ Vu+ Solo²(OpenATV) / Technotrend S2-1600
Sony KDL32W656A / TBS 6220 (DVB-C)
Terratec T-Stick+ (DAB+)
My Location
Stuttgart (48.79N/9.19E)
This thread might be rather old but it seems to me the right one to get in contact with the creator(s) of satellites.xml creator.
I am looking for a non time consuming way to update regularly the frequency/satellite database for my two E² receivers Vu+ Solo² and Octagon SF4008.

I would like to ask how often the data is beeing updated. If this depends on the satellite then may I propose this ?
Could the date be added as comment after each satellite ?
What I mean in particular is this:

<sat name="53.0W Intelsat 23" flags="0" position="-530">
<!-- 2017-03-25 -->
<transponder frequency="11911000" symbol_rate="2821000" polarization="1" fec_inner="3" system="0" modulation="1"/>
<transponder frequency="12138000" symbol_rate="3111000" polarization="0" fec_inner="3" system="0" modulation="1"/>
</sat>

<sat name="45.0W Intelsat 14" flags="0" position="-450">
<!-- 2017-03-28 -->
<transponder frequency="11600000" symbol_rate="1000000" polarization="1" fec_inner="3" system="0" modulation="1"/>
<transponder frequency="11605000" symbol_rate="990000" polarization="0" fec_inner="2" system="0" modulation="1"/>
<transponder frequency="11608000" symbol_rate="1852000" polarization="0" fec_inner="4" system="0" modulation="1"/>
<transponder frequency="11638000" symbol_rate="5632000" polarization="0" fec_inner="3" system="0" modulation="1"/>
<transponder frequency="11647000" symbol_rate="6620000" polarization="0" fec_inner="2" system="0" modulation="1"/>
<transponder frequency="11654000" symbol_rate="4131000" polarization="0" fec_inner="3" system="1" modulation="1"/>
</sat>

My biggest concern is that close satellites like 7.0W and 7.3W should not be listed as
<sat name="7.0W Nilesat 201 &amp; Eutelsat 7 West A" flags="0" position="-70">
but separated as
<sat name="7.3W Eutelsat 7 West A" flags="0" position="-73">
...
<sat name="7.0W Nilesat 201" flags="0" position="-70">
...
This of course might be no issue for all receiving inside the footprint of both satellites with small dishes but essential for all the others. For example I can get some frequencies here from Eutelsat 7 West A when aiming the dish at 7.3W but nothing if aimed at 7.0W. Nilesat 201 here requires at least 1.80m but you won't get all from Eutelsat 7.3W when aimed at 7.0W.
Just one example of lots others which from region to region of course differ. So separation of 1.0W/0.8W, 3.0E/3.1E, 4.8E/5.0E and many more is important not just for DXers but for everybody.

Further on it would be nice to have missing satellites (that are listed in flysat, lyngsat) added. One of them is 33.5W which might not be carrying regular TV/Radio but 1 Abertis frequency. There are plenty others which are just carrying feeds.

And finally it would be nice to also see Ka-Band lists.


All in all it seems to be a great method to update the satellite.xml file quickly but it has potential to get even better.
Now I am interested in your comments.
 

Burnham Beech

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Initial thoughts. The ViX team - who maintain one version of this file - had a change round a year or so ago. I think they called it a tidy up.

But due to the way enigma2 stores and uses satellite positions it meant anyone with a non-DISEQC motorised system found they lost certain satellites. ViX eventually had to back down, and go back to the original satellite positions.
 
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