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USALS on Blackgold BGT-3600


Kevl2

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Hi

I have a Blackgold BGT-3600 tuner card in a windows 7 PC. Tuner card seems to work well and gives a good picture on DVB-S and DVB-T


The 2 satellite tuners of this card are connected to 2 channels of a quad universal LNB on a motorised dish. The motor is a TM-2600 M3 DiSEqC Motor.
Satellite Tuner 1 connects directly to the LNB. Satellite Tuner 2 connects through the motor to the LNB.

The motor and dish is well aligned and can see satellites between 45E to 40W.


When using Transedit 4.2.4.0 I can access the positioner menu and move the dish to different satellites. In transedit I select DVB-S Tuner2 in the positioner menu. Dish moves and is positioned well. I can then scan channels successfully.

 

This was after setting vendor.x=13 in the C:\ProgramData\CMUV\DVBViewer\transedit.ini file (it was previously set to vendor.x=6) for the satellite tuners as hinted at in various forums. I set vendor.x=13 for both tuners. Is this correct or should the tuner without motor connection be left as vendor.x=6?


So I can use transedit to move dish and scan channels - which suggests the hardware is working and in principle, capable of doing what is required.  


But I cant get the DVBViewer app to move the dish. I have tried changing vendor=6 to vendor=13 in hardware.xml but this didn't seem to help.  

 

An addition complication is that DVBViewer is talking to the tuners via the Recording Service. The recording service has even fewer settings.


Is it possible to set this up so that selecting a channel in DVBViewer or via the recording service will move the dish and tune the channel for viewing or recording or is this beyond the scope of the program? Is the system able to send a motor command on Tuner2 to tune a channel on Tuner1? Set top boxes can manage this but they often have more complicated tuner setup menus.

 

I have looked hard at the English docs but there is not much detail. I'm not even sure vendor code = 13 is correct but it does seem to work in transedit.

 

support.zip

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vor 14 Stunden schrieb Kevl2:

This was after setting vendor.x=13 in the C:\ProgramData\CMUV\DVBViewer\transedit.ini file (it was previously set to vendor.x=6) for the satellite tuners as hinted at in various forums. I set vendor.x=13 for both tuners.

 

13 stands for TBS devices and their specific DiSEqC interface. I'm a bit surprised that driving a motor with a  Blackgold BGT-3600 works in this way, because I've never seen evidence for a connection between BGT and TBS. If getting the TBS interface fails, TransEdit falls back to a standard BDA DiSEqC method that has been introduced by Microsoft in Windows 7. It also allows controlling a motor. However, if this makes DiSEqC 1.2 work, it should also work with vendor.x=6.

 

vor 14 Stunden schrieb Kevl2:

But I cant get the DVBViewer app to move the dish. I have tried changing vendor=6 to vendor=13 in hardware.xml but this didn't seem to help.  

 

How did you try to move the motor with DVBViewer? The hardware-specific code is almost identical with the one in TransEdit.

 

vor 14 Stunden schrieb Kevl2:

An addition complication is that DVBViewer is talking to the tuners via the Recording Service. The recording service has even fewer settings.

 

The DiSEqC settings are part of the channel data. Though the Sat>IP specifications only support DiSEqC 1.0, DVBViewer transmits a (proprietary) set of extended channel data to the Media Server, that also covers DiSEqC 1.2. So it should work in theory via a virtual RTSP network device, provided DVBViewer and the Media Server are using the same channel list, that is correctly configured for driving the motor.

 

Anyway, the first thing that I would try is moving the motor with TransEdit, but by setting up DiSEqC accordingly, without using the positioner console. Please read more about it here (the hints for DVBViewer Pro are out-dated,, so better don't rely on them). Try to reach a state where just selecting a transponder and clicking Analyze moves the motor to the correct position. If you can achieve this, it should work in DVBViewer and the Media Server accordingly.

 

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Many thanks for taking the time to help me with this.

 

 

3 hours ago, Griga said:

 

However, if this makes DiSEqC 1.2 work, it should also work with vendor.x=6.

 

When the setting in transedit.ini was at the default vendor.x=6 then the positioner menu was greyed out. That is why I set =13. Maybe vendor.x=y (where y = some other secret number) would be even better??? Is there a secret number for Blackgold? I haven't experimented with other integers. Once the menu became accessible and dish seemed to work well I left the number at 13.

 

I'm using USALS. I have seen this called DiSEqC 1.3. Are DiSEqC 1.3 commands correctly handled by the 1.2 interfaces?

 

 

3 hours ago, Griga said:

How did you try to move the motor with DVBViewer? The hardware-specific code is almost identical with the one in TransEdit.

 

I tried to move the dish in DVBViewer by Main menu, TV/Radio/Reception Settings, Channel Search

 

Then setup a scan with a transponder list making sure that Angular position is specified as diseqc type and site coordinates are correct for my dish. Press save and then scan--> and in following screen - scan range . Scanning then happens but since dish has not moved then no channels are found.

 

Would this be expected to move the dish and then scan or am I misunderstanding the menus?

 

 

 

Question.

 

Transedit positioner menu knows which of the two tuners to send the diseqc command to as the tuner is selected in the positioner menu. How does the DVBViewer app know? Does it send the command to both tuners or does it read transedit's settings?

 

 

I will look at setting up transedit as you describe and let you know how I get on.

Edited by Kevl2
added info
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I have done some more experiments with dish.

 

Using the positioner menu I can move the dish to a given orbital position. This works perfectly.

 

As an experiment I then stored a few angular positions as presets (thinking that maybe this would allow ordinary diseqC 1.2 commands to work???). I did 8 satellites and stored them as positions 1 through 8. Position 0 I left as the presumed dish due south reference position.

 

Having now stored 8 positions I leave the positioner menu and go into transedit main menu. I change the satellites in the left hand side satellites list to have the corresponding presets and then set diseqc to preset position and then hit analyse button. Dish does not move. Scanning finds no channels.

 

So the only way to move the dish is via transedit's positioner menu. Neither Transedit or DVBViewer main programs can move the dish.

 

What does the positioner menu do that the rest of the program doesn't do?

 

 

 

 

 

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vor 2 Stunden schrieb Kevl2:

When the setting in transedit.ini was at the default vendor.x=6 then the positioner menu was greyed out.

 

I see. TransEdit disables it because up to now Blackgold devices were not known as DiSEqC 1.2 capable. I've sent you a PM with a TransEdit test version that enables the positioner console for Blackgold devices. Please try if it works with vendor.x=6.

 

vor 2 Stunden schrieb Kevl2:

Then setup a scan with a transponder list making sure that Angular position is specified as diseqc type and site coordinates are correct for my dish. Press save and then scan--> and in following screen - scan range . Scanning then happens but since dish has not moved then no channels are found. Would this be expected to move the dish and then scan or am I misunderstanding the menus?

 

Yes. In theory.

 

vor 2 Stunden schrieb Kevl2:

Transedit positioner menu knows which of the two tuners to send the diseqc command to as the tuner is selected in the positioner menu. How does the DVBViewer app know?

 

Only one of your tuners is able to move the dish. I think that is the main problem in your setup. DVBViewer always takes the first suitable (unoccupied) tuner from the top of the device list on Options -> Hardware. TranEdit handles it similarly, but additionally allows to set tuner usage to preferred. The order of devices can be changed by drag & drop. So you must make sure that the tuner that controls the motor is the first one in the list and unoccupied.

 

Another problem may occur if the motor unit is powered by the BGT-3600, that may switch the LNB power supply off while it is unused (?). When the tuner sends the first DiSEqC command after power on, the motor unit may still be unable to receive it. That's why there is a DiSEqC = Extended setting that allows to configure a sequence of repeated DiSEqC commands with delays in between. An alternative is changing DiSEqCCount.x in the file TransEdit.ini to 2 or 3 for letting TransEdit send DiSEqC commands two or three times.

 

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Further feedback.

 

With vendor =6 on all tuners - so that it is as per installation default as far as I know.

 

Positioner menu is indeed enabled (as you expected) but the motor no longer moves anywhere from the positioner menu.

 

Putting vendor=13 back into the transedit.ini for just the satellite tuners restores motor movement but I now realize that motor only goes to the correct location when using the Goto angular pos. button. If I try to store a position (as an integer) and goto the stored integer position then the motor sometimes fails to move and sometimes moves ... but to the wrong position. So with vendor = 13 then motor only partially works, with vendor=6 it doesnt work at all. Maybe Blackgold changed their driver to be more type 13 like. My Blackgold drivers are the latest 9.1.0.5 but dated 2013.

 

I then investigated the use of the DiSEqCCount.x= 3 to see if that helps. With count set at 3 (it was originally set at 1) on both tuners it now appears that storing and moving to a preset now works in the positioner menu. (I didn't try setting count = 2).

 

There does appear to be a general lack of stability with is tuner card though. Something I had not noticed before when it was looking at a fixed dish. Maybe it doesn't like supplying the motor current???

 

I will now look at switching the motor from tuner 2 to tuner 1. I had plugged it into the top most F type on the tuner card thinking that this would be Tuner 1 but I was not correct.

 

 

 

 

 

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Have now swapped over the tuner cables so that the motor is connected to Tuner1 but now transedit is really broken.

When trying to analyse from transedit I get a popup dialog saying:

 

The server rejects the connection

 

and then a second dialog saying

 

The server cannot provide the requested transponder

 

No idea why this has happened.

 

Full reinstallation required?

 

 

 

 

 

 

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vor 3 Stunden schrieb Kevl2:

With vendor =6 on all tuners - so that it is as per installation default as far as I know.

Positioner menu is indeed enabled (as you expected) but the motor no longer moves anywhere from the positioner menu.

 

Strange! It really looks like the have implemented the TBS DiSEqC interface in the BGT-3600 driver.

 

vor 2 Stunden schrieb Kevl2:

Have now swapped over the tuner cables so that the motor is connected to Tuner1

 

Why didn't you simply swap the tuners in DVBViewer / TransEdit, as described above?

 

vor 2 Stunden schrieb Kevl2:

The server cannot provide the requested transponder

 

I wouldn't use RTSP network devices and hardware access via the Media Server while you are trying to make your setup work and solve basic problems, particularly not in TransEdit! Keep it simple for now! Let TransEdit access the hardware directly and stop the Media Server while you are testing. You can still make it more complicated later...

 

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Quote

Why didn't you simply swap the tuners in DVBViewer / TransEdit, as described above?

 

I wanted motor on Tuner 1 as earlier conversations suggests DVBViewer might default to sending diseqc commands to the first tuner it finds - presumably Tuner 1??

 

I've done a clean install of DVBViewer and transedit and have not installed the media server part - as you say to keep it simple.

 

I think my tuner card hardware is now broken. It wont drive the motor from either of its tuners. Instead of moving smoothly over many degrees the motor just makes tiny steps when buttons are pressed on the positioner app. I've even been up and done a hardware reset on the motor with a paper clip. Pressing the manual button on the motor similarly produces only small steps so maybe the tuner is now current limiting. When I connect a set top box to the motor then it appears that the motor has got lost and I needed to use the set top box to move the dish to its reference 0 point and then it worked fine. Reconnecting the dish back to the Blackgold tuner still does not allow the dish to work properly. Unless the windows driver is remembering that it was lost and broken and refuses to move lest it wraps the dish around a wall.

 

Looking at other forums it appears the Blackgold tuners are really not very good. I noticed that the Blackgold website no longer allows download of the BGT-3600 drivers (I looked earlier to see if they had updated them since 2013). Maybe they get less support queries if they don't let customers have drivers :-).

 

Anyway I think I've wasted enough of your time with this.

 

Thanks for your kind help.

 

I might look at getting a proper tuner at some point.

 

 

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Tuner card is not broken - well no more than usual. It looks like playing with the positioner menu caused the dish to get lost. I went up ladder, manually moved it to zero and then reset it. Transedit positioner is now back in control.

 

Motor is now connected to Tuner1

Sat Tuner1 is top tuner in hardware list

Sat Tuner1 is now set as preferred

Sat Tuner2 is set as normal

 

Media Server app is not installed.

 

Positioner menu can move dish.

 

Transedit menu does not move dish

DVBViewer app does not move dish

 

DVBViewer can play video if dish is pointing correctly.

 

I think that about covers the existing options.

 

Not sure there is anything else to try.

Looks like this card just doesn't want to work.

 

 

 

 

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The positioner console initializes the configured tuner on first button click. If there is a timing problem due to the power-on process (see here), the first command will tend to fail, but subsequent commands will work. That's something to check... anyway, you can keep the tuner in the initialized state by leaving the positioner console open after having clicked one or more buttons. That may help if you try other things in TransEdit.

 

The positioner just sends DiSEqC commands, without performing tuning. Playback, scanning, analyzing etc. sends DiSEqC commands (e.g. Angular Position) in the same way, but as part of the tuning process, that may include voltage switching for H/V selection, 22 kHz tone on/off for low/high band selection etc. Depending on the timing applied by the driver this may interfere with the DiSEqC signal and disturb it.

 

You can obtain maximum influence on it by using DiSEqC = Extended and the DiSEqC Editor. I would try something like this

 

Zwischenablage01.png

 

in order to kind of isolate the DiSEqC command from the tuning process. Dont forget to click Apply on the left side of the main window after a change

 

Just another hint: If you try to move the motor by tuning a transponder on a satellite position, for which you have set up DiSEqC as shown above,  rather use the analyzer in TransEdit, not the scanner, because in the analyzer there is no time-out. It will wait for data until the dish has reached the desired position. And try low / high band and H/V transponders, in case certain conditions must be met for making the motor move...

 

 

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Sorry for the delay, I have been receiving therapy.

 

 

Re music, really? Situation reminds me of the famous English medieval folk song "smashing my satellite card to pieces with a hammer and then burning the fragments". Its tuneful little ditty. Nice lute work.

 

I have experimented further.

 

For ease of investigation I have made a transponder list for 3 satellites (Turksat 42E, Astra 19.2E and Astra 28.2E). Each with 2 FTA transponders contained.

 

By setting the disegc settings to extended as you recommend then I can get the dish to move using the transedit 'analyze' menu button - sometimes (this is an improvement). At other times it does not move. Once it has decided not to move then it tends not to change its mind. So perhaps comms is corrupt and motor then stops working.

 

I then have to close transedit and use a different app to move dish back to ref position (ProgDVB - ProgSatFinder.exe - seems to work with motor). Transedit then seems to work again for a few times. Since working / not working seems intermittent it is hard to be certain of causal factors here.

 

I then tried increasing delays on the extended settings to 2000ms, dish position, 2000ms - in case that helped. It didn't seem to. It is still intermittent.

 

So before I could never get dish to move. Now can .... sometimes. ?

 

A common event in transedit is that when analyse is pressed then a dialog is spawned which says 'tuning error' This seems to happen whether dish has moved or not. I then press the restart button and then often analysis starts.

 

I still have vendor = 13 set (rather than vendor = 6). Is the only difference between these two vendor codes the handling of disecq commands or might the 13 code introduce additional issues?

 

I note that in other apps which can control dishes using DiseqC motors then there are often 3 types of motors listed and one has to be specific as to which motor type one has fitted. Each speaks a subtly different dialect. There is no such setting (that I have noticed) in DVBViewer. Does DVBViewer ask the motor which type it is thereby avoiding the need for this setting?

 

My hardware is set as per the attached image. It is set as such as it seemed to work best but there are a lot of permutations of settings so might not be optimal.

 

Today I received some new drivers from Blackgold. I have not yet installed these and have no idea if they are actually different from the existing drivers for the BGT-3600. The Blackgold website still lists the 2013 drivers as the latest. They might just have added extra drivers into the pack for new model cards etc

 

 

 

K

 

 

Capture.JPG

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13 hours ago, Kevl2 said:

I then tried increasing delays on the extended settings to 2000ms, dish position, 2000ms - in case that helped. It didn't seem to.

 

I would rather try repeated DiSEqC commands, maybe with a delay in between. You can insert a command more than once.

 

13 hours ago, Kevl2 said:

I note that in other apps which can control dishes using DiseqC motors then there are often 3 types of motors listed and one has to be specific as to which motor type one has fitted. Each speaks a subtly different dialect.

 

I have no knowledge about that. The implementation in TransEdit and DVBViewer refers to the DiSEqC standard as specified by EutelSat.

 

13 hours ago, Kevl2 said:

Does DVBViewer ask the motor which type it is thereby avoiding the need for this setting?

 

No.

 

13 hours ago, Kevl2 said:

I still have vendor = 13 set (rather than vendor = 6). Is the only difference between these two vendor codes the handling of disecq commands or might the 13 code introduce additional issues?

 

I don't think so. Possibly the chip set (NXP) is the missing link between BlackGold and TBS. Maybe both companies are using modifications of the reference driver published by the chip set manufacturer.

 

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