Need help with satellite feed

[Adrian Wong]

Hey, guys. Have any of you actually done a setup like this before? We have a large satellite dish in a separate location from our main building (it is in a middle school that is next door). We got the details from the NASA-TV site, but we lack the experience to set this up.

What kind of equipment do we need? How do we figure out the proper direction to point the satellite (other than 85 degress west)? If we actually capture the satellite signal, what is required to decode it (something to do with the frequency, polarization, and audio, right)?

Any help would be appreciated.

[Nate Smith]

As far as the exact details(angle,etc.) I'm not sure, but here's the frequency, etc. information from FIRST's site (http://www.usfirst.org/2002comp/FRCkickoff.html):

NASA BROADCAST
Scheduled for 9:00 AM to 12:30 PM EST
Broadcast channel/cable channel/Dish/satellite specs
NTV is broadcast on GE-2, transponder 9C, C-Band, located at 85 degrees West longitude.
The frequency is 3880.0 MHz. Polarization is vertical and audio is monaural at 6.8 MHz.

[Adrian Wong]

Yes, I had given that information to our technical director already. He replied with, "I don't understand this information." So, I'm hoping that one of you guys can help us translate this into layman's terms.

[Madison]

I don't know how much of help this will be but -

My uncle's biggest dish is the oldest of the three - and sounds similar to what you're talking about. He's got some sort of electronic gizmo or something or another that has different satellite coordinates in it.

So, in effect, he just has to choose to point at GE-2, and it does it for him. . .

I'll ask him how he does it, and I'll see if it's any help, okay?

[Adrian Wong]

Thanks. We asked our local AT&T community channel, and they were unhelpful. They wouldn't even offer to let us email a person and have him right down some instructions and equipment.

We found some online calculators to figure out what direction and how high. Our main problem is getting the signal from the dish to an LCD projector, along with all the details in between. Since the dish is several hundred feet away, we may need some noise filters and amplifiers. We don't know what satellite equipment we need. All those frequencies have to be input somewhere, right?

[ahecht]

Or, you could find someone with dish network (or just buy a cheap dish network system). They have NASA TV included in the basic ($20 a month) package on channel 213.

[Tom Schindler]

I just called my local cable company (COX), and they have put in a request for the NASA broadcast to be turned on for the kickoff... There were no gurantees if they are going to run it for us, but its worth a shot

Tom

[Pat Bogard]

I have a 10' dish at home, i would suggest calling a local electronics shop, not a radio shack but one owned by people who specialize in this. What we have is a reciever and it gets calibrated to a satelite postition and all that jazz, with the polarity and audio. I hope that helps a little bit.

[Jessica Boucher]

Originally posted by Tom Schindler
I just called my local cable company (COX), and they have put in a request for the NASA broadcast to be turned on for the kickoff... There were no gurantees if they are going to run it for us, but its worth a shot

Tom

Ooh! Let me know if that goes through....so my grandparents can watch it

[Adrian Wong]

Alas. Things appeared to have broken down here in Hopkinton. AT&T is unwilling to negotiate with our school over the satellite dish. One positive effect of all this is an inquiry has been opened in the school committee over AT&T's contract with the high school.

Anywho, AT&T doesn't carry it on cable, either. Which is kind of funny, since they always air commercials in this area about how AT&T has all these satellites so customers don't need to buy a satellite dish; they should just go cable. I've lost all faith in them now.

It looks like we're just going to settle for a pixelated webcast. Maybe we'll get an LCD projector so we don't have to crowd around the monitor.

Thanks for everyone's help though.

[Tom Schindler]

Originally posted by Jessica Boucher


Ooh! Let me know if that goes through....so my grandparents can watch it

after a few weeks of waiting COX did not get back to me.... i called them back and asked them what the status was of my request, they did not do anything in those few weeks. To top it off, they said, "well if you had called a few weeks ago we may have been able to do something"

Wow i love these cable companies.... its webcast time.

Tom

[Justin Stiltner]

well as far as getting the signal to the lcd projector a really long peice of coax cable would probally do it..
you may get a local radioshack, or other store like that to donate a roll and you give them the cable back after you use it, they should still be able to use it cause they cut it up anyway.

but you could run it into a vcr then out on some rca cables to the lcd projector. In this instance the vcr would handel the channel changing.

I would see if I couldent just use the middle school, prehaps a room in which they can patch the vidio into???
this is a lil late I know. but maby it will help.

[Justin Stiltner]

well as far as getting the signal to the lcd projector a really long peice of coax cable would probally do it..
you may get a local radioshack, or other store like that to donate a roll and you give them the cable back after you use it, they should still be able to use it cause they cut it up anyway.

but you could run it into a vcr then out on some rca cables to the lcd projector. In this instance the vcr would handel the channel changing.

I would see if I couldent just use the middle school, prehaps a room in which they can patch the vidio into???
this is a lil late I know. but maby it will help.

[Adrian Wong]

Thanks for the input. The satellite dish ended up being off limits, so whether we used the high school or middle school became a moot question.

Since we're watching the webcast, we're just going to run it full screen on a laptop and connect that directly to the LCD projector. We're also going to run two feeds concurrently (broadcast.com and NASA), so if one starts buffering, we can still watch the other one.

Hehe, can't wait!!