I am just trying to get my dish pointed, using a Lighthouse (with the dish and LNB sold in the Outernet store, which should be plenty big from San Diego). If I look at the Tuner Settings page, it shows 0 across the board and there’s a flashing red set of four bars and a downward-pointing arrow.
Is this display being updated live? If I move the dish to the right pointing, can I expect to see the signal strength peak up to a non-zero value? Will that happen immediately or is there a delay? Or do I just need to buy a separate satellite finder?
So far I’ve been unable to get any hint of a signal on the Lighthouse Tuner Settings page, for either Galaxy 19 or Eutelsat 113W, despite a fair amount of fiddling with the dish pointing and LNB skew.
The interface wasn’t specifically deigned for pointing the dish. Having said that, the lock, signal strenth, and SNR (Quality) are directly relayed from the tuner and updated approximately every 3 seconds. If you’re not getting any reaction, it could also suggest bad LNB, bad connection to LNB, or an issue with the tuner itself (especially if you get NO TUNER indication).
Do you have an appropriate sized dish? For example, you can get the minimum dish size requirement from Satbeams.
Thanks for the info on how the interface behaves, that will be very helpful next time I try to point the dish. It’d be nice if this was explained in the pointing tutorial documents. It’d be even nicer if there were a screen that was designed for pointing the dish. I don’t know what’s possible with this hardware, but if it can show the noise level (which should give an indication that the LNB is hooked up and working) and the raw signal level (like a Satellite Finder) in near real time, it would be useful.
Satbeams recommends a 65cm dish for Eutelsat 113W or a 70cm dish for Galaxy 19 for my location (San Diego) at Ku band. The dish I’m using is the 90cm one supplied through the Outernet store, so it should be plenty big enough.
I am not an expert at pointing dishes. Some years ago I installed a DirecTV dish by myself and didn’t have too much trouble. The DirecTV receiver I used provided an audible tone as a pointing aid, and that was very useful. The tone didn’t respond instantaneously, but the delay was pretty short and felt responsive.
I have a lot of experience pointing VHF and UHF Yagi antennas at amateur radio satellites in low and medium Earth orbits, but that doesn’t count for much here.
I recommend using the analog SatFinder, give an audible tone related to signal intensity
i use http://www.dishpointer.com/ to get data to align dish, and take me the first time like 2 hours to get the right sat, using analog and digital sat finder, last week i change the lnb and make the exercise again, just 5 min to aling the dish again.
on 97w or 113w may use 70cm(or more) dish (i supose you are in San Diego)
also can use a old FTA receiver to make the same process of DirecTV, chasing outernet signal with sound guide, like an analog satfinder to…
A while back, Tjanos posted a very useful article about an Android phone app that pinpoints in the sky exactly where to point you dish. The post is called Satellite Director App (29 days ago). I used it to verify my Galaxy 19 pointing. It may help you. Ken
Thanks for the app suggestions. I used an iPhone app called Dish Align to get started.
OK, so I bought a cheap satellite finder and tried it. I had no trouble finding a whopping signal from approximately where I expected Galaxy 19 to be, and peaking up the dish azimuth, elevation, and slant. That would seem to mean that the LNB is good, and the Lighthouse is providing voltage to it. I then disconnected the cable from the LNB side of the finder and connected it directly to ANT1 on the Lighthouse. However, the Lighthouse continued to insist that the signal level was 0. I power cycled the Lighthouse, no change.
I also looked briefly for Eutelsat 113W, but did not immediately find a signal in that part of the sky. I notice that the status page shows 0 bits/second on Eutelsat 113W, so maybe there’s no signal from that satellite today.
Well, if your sat meter shows any signal (even if it was a wrong bird), it should be reflected in the software. There could be two things wrong then. Either there’s a software issue, or the tuner in the Lighthouse is dodgy in which case you would need to send it back to us for a replacement or refund.
Can you download the logs from the settings section (Applications logs > Download button) and upload it somewhere?
Could you please select the satellite preset, click on Update settings, wait a few seconds, refresh the page and copy the contents of the application logs text box here?
Clicking the Update Settings button doesn’t seem to change the contents of the application logs text box. If it matters, this test was done with the dish in the garage, not pointed at the sky, but I think the application log has always been substantially like this. Here it is:
here HJ4JGG