floof.org
I did an achievement today: fixed one of the wall lights in the lounge which didn't work.
I *had* thought the problem was going to be a broken wire somewhere under a floor/above a ceiling/inside a wall, but thankfully it turned out to be simpler. I had already (days after moving in) replaced the light switch, which was a dimmer switch and was apparently faulty in some way because the light that worked would be much dimmer than it could be (I tested by putting the G9 bulb in a floor lamp and it was much brighter) with a simple on-off switch.
Today I took that switch off again to properly test the cable to the dead light fixture. There were 4 wires coming into that switch, 2 to the common side and 2 to the switched side. I assumed the 2 on the common side were the two directions on a ring, and the other 2 went one to each wall light. Identified which one went to the working light and tried to test the other.
In the end I figured out a method of testing: I used an extension cord as a temporary wire, pushed an earth pin I got from a spare plug into one of the sockets on the extension reel, attached one probe of my multimeter in beep continuity mode to that, connected the other probe to one of the wires coming to the light fixture, then touched the earth pin at the other end of the extension cord to various wires behind the switch with the beep telling me which were connected. (That was the method I finally used; at first I did it the other way round, connecting at the switch end, running across the room to the lamp and touching probes to things there, going back, etc.)
I got really confused because, while the voltage proximity wand had previously told me the live wire to the light worked, and I was guessing the neutral was broken, I now failed to get any continuity at all! In the end I took almost all the wires out of the back of the switch (thinking I was remembering which was which, but actually I lost track) and tested *everything*. Turns out, only one of the 4 wires went to both lamps! That changed things a bit. I now assumed there must be a junction box somewhere splitting the cable between the two.
A bit more testing and I figured out where most of the other wires went. Figured out a testing method for that too: replace a low-energy bulb with an old incandescent one, then, if the wire pair I'm testing goes to that light, the resistance will change significantly when the switch is flipped on and off. I worked out that one wire went to the hall light, and one went to both the study and the dining room lights. Leaving the wires all disconnected I turned the circuit back on at the consumer unit and found the hall light didn't work while the study and dining room ones did, so that was the supply cable and the hall light was daisy-chained off the lounge lights. The beepy voltage-detector wand confirmed that.
(So there's still a wire that I don't know what it does. I've connected it to the switched side of the lounge lights because that's where it must have been before, but I wish I knew what it was for.)
Finally I could get all the wires reconnected and make things safe, so I did that. Then I had a brain-wave and realised the second wall light might simply be daisy-chained off the first, in which case there might not even be a junction box involved. I pulled the first lamp fixture off the wall (which I hadn't tried before because that fixture was working fine) and, lo and behold, there were 2 wires going to it! And one of them had a loose neutral wire! Re-made the connection, put it all back together, and it works!
Wow, that took a long time, a huge chunk out of the day, but it's very satisfying to actually diagnose and fix stuff like that.
(Yes, I've written "wire" when I probably should have said "cable" in many places, but I'm not going back to edit it all again...)
I seem to be in the process of doing something similar with the satellite feed. The house came with a dish strapped to its side, and a pair of F-connectored cables go from it to the corner of the lounge, where they couple to a pair of cables running under the floor to the TV area. While there's a terrestrial aerial on the roof (and another in the loft, I think) none of the TV sockets around the house are within cabling reach of the TV area, so satellite it seems it must be. I've got a Freesat box (Foxsat-HDR) and have plugged it in and tried to set it up, but it doesn't seem to see the signals it needs to set up Freesat properly, although it does get a few random unencrypted channels, mostly home shopping stuff and some religious and arabic (I think?) news channels).
I've tried adjusting the dish angles but don't seem to be able to find any other satellites near the direction it was already pointing. I'm pretty sure it's pointing approximately the right direction already, and I've adjusted it to get the signal it was already seeing as good as possible. I'm not sure where to go from here, though. Swapping the cables around and tuning again results in losing most of the channels, and still not getting the 11428MHz signal that is supposedly the Freesat "home transponder" and the one to make sure you get a good signal on, according to various forum posts. I don't know if both LNBs work, whether they are the same or need to be treated differently (maybe one's for vertical polarisation and one's for horizontal? Do they do it that way?), I don't know if the dish aim is good or whether it's pointing at some other satellite position, or how to figure out which, if so, so I can work out which way to adjust. I don't even know if the cabling is all good. Coming to a dead end, I suspect, and wondering if I need to give up and pay someone to come and make it work. :(
There are a few things you can try. When I was trying to align my dish, I found https://www.lyngsat.com/ and https://www.satsig.net/sf.htm helpful.
Satellite dishes need a decent coax cable and if there's any doubt at all about the LNB it's a good idea to replace it. Have you got a signal strength meter to help you with the precision alignment?
Satellite Finder - Satellite Az-El Calculator to help point your dish
www.satsig.net@TundraWolf Oh yes, I found https://www.satsig.net/maps/satellite-tv-dish-pointing-uk-ireland.htm was very helpful. It could even tell me the point on the roof of my neighbour's house I needed to align the dish with to get the correct bearing! I think I came across lyngsat too - also interesting. But even though I'm pretty sure I'm pointing the dish the right way, I don't seem to be getting several of the signals I'm sure I'm supposed to be getting.
I'm sure I bought a signal strength meter when my sister moved into her house and I helped get the satellite dish working there, but of course I have no idea where it is now... The way I worked it was to use a couple of long (5m) HDMI cables, linked together with the A/V receiver, to extend the output of the Freesat box into the garden, then plugged it into the spare TV, powered from the garden socket and positioned so I could see it from the ladder while adjusting the dish. I could then use the live signal meter on the freesat box's manual tuning screen to get it tweaked for best signal. I managed to get it to 80% strength and 100% quality; after tightening the nuts I could push on the sides of the dish to bend the mount slightly each way and see the strength/quality drop off from 100% in each bend direction and spring back to 100% when I let go, so I'm pretty sure I got it fairly near as good as it can be.
But while I'm sure it's pretty accurately pointed at *something*, I'm finding it hard to believe that that "something" is the 28.2E Astra cluster, because I just don't seem to be receiving what I should be, which is making me think that either I've pointed it accurately at the wrong cluster of satellites, or there's a fault somewhere else in the hardware here, or (unlikely) the frequencies/multiplexes/whatever have all been changed recently. It's doing my head in a bit, to be honest.
Speaking from experience, it's very easy to point it in the wrong place. We originally set up one dish at the 28.8°E cluster first time, but I think that was as much luck as anything. Trying to do the second pointing at Thor at 0.8°W was aligned everything beautifully for a lovely quality signal, but then realised it was aligned at a totally different satellite (or cluster).
We were using a DVB-S2 tuner card, so had one person trying to tune to a know frequency and looking at the stats whilst the other was adjusting the dish positioning. This eventually got us to find the right one by a bit of trial and error moving left and right, as we got a lock. Then we fine tuned knowing we were in the right ballpark. Not very scientific, but it did work.
Two LNBs is interesting, are they offset? I've heard of this where you're trying to use one reflector to see signals from two locations. We used two dishes each with a "universal" LNB - this uses a combination of bias voltage and tone generated by the receiver to pick the polarisation and high/low block for the downcoverter.
It's unlikely, but our first LNB was faulty and wouldn't select one of the polarisations. We found this by accident trying to tune to different multiplexes, and found half worked and half didn't. We then bought a new cheap LNB and it all started to work a treat.
Good luck, I hope you get to the bottom of it!
@Darkhorse WinterWolf 🇪🇺 Thank you! Maybe I should have said dual or twin LNB rather than two LNBs, it's a single chunk with two connectors, so I assumed it has two actual LNB circuits inside. I did wonder if it was one of the hybrid(?) ones which have an offset so they can point at two separate positions at the same time, but that seems an unusual setup to get some uncommonly used channels so I feel it's unlikely. And if it is, I guess the fix is still to replace the LNB! So that'll be the next thing to try. I've taken a look and I *think* it's a mk4 dish so the commonly available LNBs should fit with no problem.
Although, since then I found a page saying that a lot of problems are down to the connections at the LNB and that LNBs are difficult to kill so replacing them often makes it work just because the connectors are cleaned/reseated. So if the weather clears up I should try that first.
Ah, I see now, sorry for the misunderstanding! Our setup is a little complex - there's a dual tuner with one input currented to one LNB output on the Astra dish. The other goes to a DiSEqC switch, with one outgoing going to the other Astra LNB output and the other to the Thor one.
When looking at the LNB connections, I'm pretty sure someone like you knows how to make a decent F connector coupling. I've always then immediately wrapped the lot in self-amalgamating tape to create a water-tight connection. I also use the cable with the closed foam dielectric in it, as I'd heard that moisture can be a killer.
I've also not heard of anyone else with a bad LNB, but we definitely seemed to have had one, as I put it back again after several times, and the problem always followed the LNB. I do hope you get to the bottom of your problems!
@Darkhorse WinterWolf 🇪🇺 Ah yes, self-amagamating tape is a good idea - I still have some left over from when I was putting wifi point-to-point links on roofs. I should fetch tht on my next trip back to the old house :)
So yeah, I don't know. I first need to see how I can access the front side of the dish - there are water butts right underneath it and on one side I can fit a ladder between them and the corner of the house and get at the back of the dish without too much of a reach. I'll have to see how it is if I put the ladder the other side - might be able to reach the LNB from there. I hope it doesn't come down to emptying and moving the water butts just to get at the dish! Another alternative is bringing some of my dad's scaffolding tower parts and building a platform I can reach the dish from in front of the water butts. Oh how these things get complicated.
I've checked the connectors at the LNB and they seem in good condition - clean and dry, no sign that weather's got into the cable. I swapped the cables over at the LNB and the freesat box then only managed to find 8 channels on one transponder, not channels it had found before. When I swapped the cables at the freesat box as well, it could only find the channels it had found before, not the 8 new ones it found today (although maybe not all of them - maybe I didn't do the connectors up properly). So I think that suggests the LNB is at fault, not the cabling. Or at least not *just* the cabling!
New LNB ordered, should be here in a few days, then I can hopefully put this whole thing to bed.
The new LNB arrived yesterday while I was out. This morning I climbed the scaffolding, unscrewed the cable connectors, unclipped the old LNB, clipped the new one on, did the connectors back up, pulled the weather shield down, and climbed back down. When I turned the satellite box on it recognised that it had an antenna (hasn't done that before), accepted the postcode, very quickly found 146 channels, and now it Just Works™! Hurrah, after being in the new house since early August we finally have all the usual TV channels, plus we can record and play back. Phew, that took a while!
I've also scraped a lot more gunge out of gutters on the garage, but also discovered that all the gutters I can reach on the house are nice and clean, so I'm not sure if the high-up ones are going to need cleaning at all. I'm hoping one of my nephew's drones will let us take a look and see if someone needs to go up there and clean at all.