Motorised dishes - how many cables?

[Zaichik]

The supplier I am planning to buy my motorised system from says the dish needs two cables - one for the signal to the decoder and a motor control cable. I showed the spec to the installer who came round on Friday to give an estimate for installing the thing and he said there should only be one cable to do both.

Who is right?

[Chris Muriel]

If you use a simple DiSEqC motor, everything uses the same single coaxial cable - 14/18 V DC for the LNB, 22 KHz tone on/off for highband/lowband switching and DiSEqC signalling for the motor.
The DiSEqC motors are fine (but a little slow) for dishes up to 90 cms or so.
For larger dishes you need a 36 volt actuator which needs a multicore cables or several cables : - +/- 36 volts power, positiion feedback, move commands etc.

Chris Muriel, (currently in Tel Aviv)

[wod]

the installer is sort of right as there is 1 cable if using a diseqc motor as the lnb cable goes into the motor and then to receiver

but there is also 36volt systems that use 4 core cable for the power and pulse etc

whats the system the installer has given you a price for ?

[Zaichik]

I'm still waiting gfor the quote, but it's to install a 90cm dish with a Diseqc motor to be used with a Technomate CM1500 CI+ Super decoder. How much should I expect to pay for installation? Not that I have much choice, as this installer is pretty much the only one in my area who installs motorised systems.

BTW, Chris, when you say Diseqc motors are slow, how slow are we talking? I don't want to pay the premium for a 36v motor, but I don't want to wait prolonged periods to change channel either.

[arfster]

I get about 1.5 degrees per second on my moteck 2100, with a 90cm dish. This is fine for the majority of the time, because the distance from 13>19>28E isn't much, but it's a bit of a pain when you leave it out at 30W and then want to switch to 42E :-)

[Zaichik]

Originally Posted by Zaichik

I'm still waiting gfor the quote, but it's to install a 90cm dish with a Diseqc motor to be used with a Technomate CM1500 CI+ Super decoder. How much should I expect to pay for installation?

Anyone?

[Zaichik]

Originally Posted by arfster

I get about 1.5 degrees per second on my moteck 2100, with a 90cm dish. This is fine for the majority of the time, because the distance from 13>19>28E isn't much, but it's a bit of a pain when you leave it out at 30W and then want to switch to 42E :-)

Thanks for that. How much faster would a 36v motor be?

[wod]

36volt would be much quicker but you also need a separate positioner to move the dish or use a vbox to convert diseqc 1.2 commands to 36volt pulse etc