# What do you do with your old dishes?



## Luftwaffles

I live in an apartment and just had D* installed after my cable provider tried to pull a $60 price hike on me. The previous tenant had E* and had two Dish 500's still mounted when I moved in.

I contacted Dish via online chat and asked who the dishes belonged to, the tenant or Dish. Their answer was that Dish owns that equipment but they're not going to send somebody out to get it, so I can just dispose of it if I wish.

I took them down before my installation date to make the job a little easier for the installer, but since they were perfectly good I chose not to throw them out.

The two dishes are completely intact, DishPro LNBs and all. Can anybody think of any cool projects or applications that I can use them for?


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## fluffybear

Birdbath


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## James Long

A cool project would probably be creating a solar death ray ... but a better solution might be to put them on Craig's list or eBay.

DISH will usually ask for the LNBs back but won't push the issue if the canceling or moving customer says they can't get to the dish - and won't roll a truck to remove the dish. It is the receivers DISH really wants back.


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## fluffybear

Lawn Sculpture:


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## matt

Craiglist. The LNBs are worth a little bit.


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## thewallfisher

There is a local ISP in my area that will buy them from me. They put an ethernet powered transmitter/ receiver on the end of it ant point it to their towers.


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## P Smith

thewallfisher said:


> There is a local ISP in my area that will buy them from me. They put an [strike]ethernet [/strike]powered transmitter/ receiver on the end of it ant point it to their towers.


It's interesting ( while 'etherenet' word is irrelevant ) - can you post a picture and model of the device ?


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## James Long

Look for Motorola Canopy products ...









Using an old DBS is a cheap way of getting a reflector.

Ethernet powered is somewhat relevant as all one has to do is run an ethernet cable from the canopy module to the router inside the business/home. No separate power cable is needed. I've seen one installation that has three antennas at 300ft above ground with a router at ground level switching traffic between a line of sight backhaul such as above and omnidirectional antennas serving customers from that tower.


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## thewallfisher

It's pretty common setup. I have seen it all over Northern California. The ISPs like to use the Dish 500 dishes the most.


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## thewallfisher

This is the setup I usually see in my area.


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## P Smith

The devices working on Level 1, so it doesn't matter if it Frame Relay, ArcNet, TokenRIng or Ethernet packets traveling thru it.


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## Luftwaffles

Great ideas from all, thanks for your input guys.

I don't think it's quite worth it to put it on eBay/Craigslist. I see Dish 500 sets (plus LNBs) going for around $30-$50. At that point it would be too close to a zero-sum game to entice me to sell them.

Is there anything in the circuitry of the DishPro LNBs that makes its output signal proprietary or prevents it from receiving a FTA signal? Better yet, has anyone ever swapped out their LNBs and used their old dishes for non-TV applications like AMSAT or something similar?


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## Kevin F

I think it will work as a FTA dish. Correct me if I'm wrong though.


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## James Long

Luftwaffles said:


> Is there anything in the circuitry of the DishPro LNBs that makes its output signal proprietary or prevents it from receiving a FTA signal? Better yet, has anyone ever swapped out their LNBs and used their old dishes for non-TV applications like AMSAT or something similar?


The DISH LNBs look at the DBS frequency band, which has very few unscrambled channels on it (all the users of the DBS band are subscription services that like to protect their signals). It probably isn't worth the effort.

If it was a 500+ and not a 500 you would have a FSS LNB that could be used to pick up FTA channels - although the FTA receiver would have to know how to handle DISHPro stacking. Swapping LNBs opens up a whole world of possibilities. A dish is a reflector with a focal point ... if the dish is large enough and you have the right LNB at the focal point you can do a lot.


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## FTA Michael

Kevin F said:


> I think it will work as a FTA dish. Correct me if I'm wrong though.


A regular-sized Dish/DirecTV dish isn't very good at FTA. It'll pick up any unencrypted Dish channels (very few!), and if you swap in a linear-polarity LNB, it might be able to get some of the stronger FTA channels on a clear day.


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## harsh

P Smith said:


> It's interesting ( while 'etherenet' word is irrelevant ) - can you post a picture and model of the device ?


POE is not irrelevant. It is widely used in the application mentioned.


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## P Smith

harsh said:


> POE is not irrelevant. It is widely used in the application mentioned.


I know what is PoE and see no proof of its using in original post.


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## harsh

P Smith said:


> I know what is PoE and see no proof of its using in original post.


The key phrase from thewallfisher's post is "Ethernet powered".


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## SayWhat?

Could probably get rid of some as snow sledding discs right now.


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## P Smith

harsh said:


> The key phrase from thewallfisher's post is "Ethernet powered".


He has no knowledge of particular dishes and brought his own suggestion, not a proof.


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## James Long

P Smith said:


> He has no knowledge of particular dishes and brought his own suggestion, not a proof.


The "ethernet powered" comment has been explained. Further research into the devices will show that they are powered in the manner stated. Have you ever used one of the Canopy products with or without a reflector? I have.


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## Luftwaffles

Well, here's an update in case anybody's dying to know:

I took the second dish in the set (The single-LNB that feeds the dual-LNB) and rigged it up for WiFi.

I took a small screw-on antenna from a Cisco PCI wireless card and jammed it into the LNB where all the circuity and the serrated antenna was. It sits within the feed horn and the tip stops just before where the plastic cap would be.

I wired the antenna's connector up to the coax output. Now I'm just waiting on getting the proper cables to convert RG6 to the RP-SMA connector on the back of the Cisco card.

Too bad there are no Starbucks in my LOS...


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## P Smith

It wouldn't work as expected ... You can't use omnidirectional antenna (1/4 wavelength ) with parabolic reflector. Look for correct home made design...
Like this http://www.engadget.com/2005/11/15/how-to-build-a-wifi-biquad-dish-antenna/


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## P Smith

James Long said:


> The "ethernet powered" comment has been explained. Further research into the devices will show that they are powered in the manner stated. Have you ever used one of the Canopy products with or without a reflector? I have.


I cant' see on his picture (http://www.dbstalk.com/showpost.php?p=2704637&postcount=10) who is manufacturing the device to make further research.


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## James Long

P Smith said:


> I cant' see on his picture (http://www.dbstalk.com/showpost.php?p=2704637&postcount=10) who is manufacturing the device to make further research.


Then you'll just have to accept that he's right about them being PoE devices ... and perhaps look at the Motorola Canopy devices I linked to (which is likely what is in that picture).

I've attached a picture of a known canopy device using the normal reflector (instead of hacking an old DBS dish). This is a 14 Mbps module that is used for a point to point link. Advertising PDF with some specs.


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## thewallfisher

It is made by Trango model fox5800


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## James Long

thewallfisher said:


> It is made by Trango model fox5800


Very similar ... here is the product data sheet for the Trango.


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## Luftwaffles

P Smith said:


> It wouldn't work as expected ... You can't use omnidirectional antenna (1/4 wavelength ) with parabolic reflector. Look for correct home made design...
> Like this -snip-


If I remember correctly someone said that Engadget's biquad design was actually wrong. I'm not sure why exactly, but that's the accusation.

Would a Yagi or LP antenna work better than the quarter-wavelength omni?


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## P Smith

harsh said:


> The key phrase from thewallfisher's post is "Ethernet powered".


I see from that PDF it is PoE, just the wording did sounds for me confusing way.


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## kenglish

Kevin F said:


> I think it will work as a FTA dish. Correct me if I'm wrong though.


It's been a while since I did it, but I acquired several older dishes and used them for FTA channels off DISH and BEV. At the time, I was getting NASA, some DISH "Barker" channels, and quite a few radio channels from BEV.

Of course, these dishes are too small, and the LNBs are the wrong type, for standard Ku FTA channels, like Galaxy 19.


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## P Smith

kenglish said:


> It's been a while since I did it, but I acquired several older dishes and used them for FTA channels off DISH and BEV. At the time, I was getting NASA, some DISH "Barker" channels, and quite a few radio channels from BEV.
> 
> Of course, these dishes are too small, and the LNBs are the wrong type, *for standard Ku FTA channels*, like Galaxy 19.


Should be "for standard Ku *FSS* FTA channels".


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## Kevin F

"kenglish" said:


> It's been a while since I did it, but I acquired several older dishes and used them for FTA channels off DISH and BEV. At the time, I was getting NASA, some DISH "Barker" channels, and quite a few radio channels from BEV.
> 
> Of course, these dishes are too small, and the LNBs are the wrong type, for standard Ku FTA channels, like Galaxy 19.


Thanks for the info. Didn't know they weren't very good FTA dishes.


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## P Smith

Kevin F said:


> Thanks for the info. Didn't know they weren't very good FTA dishes.


Pretty well described suggestion for FTA-ers - use 1m/39" reflector, or bigger.


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