Reusing Old Satellite Dishes?

nlaporte asks: "My neighbor just threw out his old Primestar satellite dish and receiver. Thinking that I might be able to use it, I picked them up. As Primestar is defunct (aquired by DirecTV), I was wondering if anyone knew how (or knew of a Web site that told how) to reuse the old dish and/or reciever for receiving other satellite broadcasts, i.e. NASA TV or Voice of America, etc. What about using it for another pay satellite service? Is this dish I picked up worth keeping, or should I chuck it?" I hope there will be more uses for the glut of satellite dishes that have popped up all over America and the rest of the world...otherwise garbage dumps are going to get real interesting over the next few years.

Comments

Birdbath?

[jonr]

Sorry, couldn't resist...

Re:USes for a dish

[funkman]

Sled for the kiddies. Its a nice small size, the sitting area is nice and flat but curved enough to fit a person.

Excellent Planters

[InitZero]

I had a three-meter dish that I dumped for one of the nifty 18-inch dishes. I sunk it in my back yard and filled it with potting soil. It's where I grow my strawberries. It keeps the weeds out and, once I put some down some edging, it looked good enough that the wife didn't complain.

When PrimeStar went out of business, I grabbed half a dozen dishes out of trash piles and turned them into planters in the front yard. It looks really nifty.

I tried to use some odd-ball dishes as cement forms to create stepping stones (the pointy end would go down, of course) but that didn't work too well. They aren't deep enough and the cement was too thin and kept cracking.

I'd like to find some more dishes. They really are pretty handy. As someone else noted, if you get the right shape, they make excellent sleds.

InitZero

Re:Excellent Planters

[Tony Shepps]

That's no good. Your strawberries will be the first to pick up all the instructions from the aliens. (They may be organic, but little do the masses understand that man-made chemicals cause those instructions to be blotted out entirely -- in effect saving most of us from the raging hordes of death that will reign over much of the earth in the upcoming years.)

Furthermore, you have unwittingly given the strawberries a bully pulpit into the sky. By allowing them to send *their* messages out -- typically extremely simple messages, as far as we know -- many cultures out there are going to think that berries are the dominant earth culture. And when other berry cultures visit us, and see products like "Boo-Berry" and "Crunchberries", they'll be quite justified in wiping out all non-berry organisms on the planet.

Isn't it bad enough that we broadcast Tony Danza TV movies? Think of the consequences of your actions!
--

Re:Wireless Networks??

[penguinboy]

I dont think the FCC could say much about it either, because you not useing part of the electromagentic spectrum.

*bzzt* No. Microwaves are indeed electromagnetic radiation. They have very short wavelength (hence the term "micro" waves) and high frequency, but they're certainly radio waves.

Re:links

[titus-g]

first line should be...

It it's

Re:links

[titus-g]

just shoot me.

If it's

I mean, check, double check...

Programmable satellite...

[binner]

A couple weeks ago, I looked up a couple sites (links at home sorry :( ) that had info on programming the cards in the recievers. Apparently, if it's got the right cpu in it, it's as easy as plugging a parallel cable into it from an old 286 and running a bit of software. The hardest part is getting the instructions to upload to the card. If you can find the instructions, you and have the right card, you should be able to get free satellite for quite a while. I'll post the link to the site after work.

-Ben

probably compatible with other commercial systems

[nylreM]

I know the LNB's for Dish Network and DirecTV are compatible. Probably mutually with PrimeStar.

Ham Radio

[lw54]

There are Ham Radio uses but I can't think of any at the moment. However, I do recall the oblong ones are better for this use than the circular ones.

Good luck.

Re:Wireless Networks??

[eagl]

*bzzzt* he was talking about audio (his references to the big echo dishes and modems) not RF.

*bzzzt*
*bzzzzt*

I get debate points for typing *bzzzt*, right?

Wireless Networks??

[nowindowz]

How about replaceing the LNB with a microwave transever? Or even just plan radio. What about a microfone? That just gave me a idea. Rember going to the museum, and you and a friend would sit in a dish shaped object and talk real quitly and you could hear other as clear as day. You could build somekind of a high speed modem, to link you and your friend. I dont think the FCC could say much about it either, because you not useing part of the electromagentic spectrum. Now if I just had some free time.

Re:USes for a dish

[dbloodnok]

1. A stir fry dish

Of course, you could go the other way. Some friends of mine turned their unused wok into a satellite dish on their roof. It was only for a laugh because Waikato Uni (which was next door) had put up another huge satellite dish for internet pointing almost directly at them. Presumably there was some geo-synchronous satellite just above the horizon.

Re:SETI at home (really)

[linzeal]

I love this link on the site

(The SETI League Mini-Manual)

It is time SETI faced a little free-market compet

[MOMOCROME]

I recommend we gather all these defunct dishes together to make some sort of " Geographically Distributed Wide Array Multi-Point Radio Telescope" or G.D.W.A.M.P.R.T. system (like they used in that one anime movie about the senetor and his high-tech crime-fighting secretary) we could use many open-source principles and a new day of peace and merriment would ensue.

It is time SETI faced a little free-market competition!

-=(V)0(V)0cr0(V)3=-

Doing the dishes...

[human bean]

I turned a four meter solid aluminum (it came split in quarters) Sat dish into a gazebo roof. Looked pretty good, and the hole for the feedhorn just fit the vent decoration.

I gave another one (three meter) away to a friend, who sunk it face-up in the back yard, filled it with water, installed a pump and made a fountain out of it.

Smaller dishes set on concrete blocks make pretty good livestock feeders

Great for snacking

[Johnboy]

Fill it with salsa, some giant corn chips...

SETI really at home?

[XenonOfArcticus]

If you could get a few dozen of these out in a nice open field, and track them all the same (need a decent multi-axis rotator device) wouldn't this parallel array perform like a single large dish? (Same principle the VLA uses to make a bunch of big dishes work like one really massive dish). You could perform radio astronomy or SETI projects yourself at home. Probably need to upgrade the feedhorn/LNBA to something capable of tuning frequencies other than sat TV.

USes for a dish

[luckykaa]

1. A stir fry dish
2. A hat
3. a frisbee
4. a very small boat for a very smooth sea
5. Turn it into a steel drum

links

[titus-g]

Unless It's analogue rather than digital satellite then I'd imagine with a bit of tinkering then there must be something you could do with it, plenty of free to air channels out there...

I thought I had some bookmarks on DIY sattelite stuff, but either a) I didn't or b) I just can't see them among the hundreds of othere.

So instead have a satellite links page, among the billions of links here there should be a site to suit:

http://members.tripod.com/~eld orado2000/catalog.html

Primestar receiver useless

[Fooster]

But the Dish lives on. See this page at The Echostar Knowledge Base for drawings and photos that will show you how to convert that old Primestar Dish to one which receives DirecTV or Dish Network with much more gain (thus much less rain and snow fade).

SETI at home (really)

[Mark Hood]

DIY Search for ET Intelligence.
http://www.setileague.org/

Hundreds of people are doing this already! They're already finding weird things they can't explain (usually secret satellites, planes and so on) with just a dish, some relatively cheap electronics and an old PC & sound card.
Imagine the kudos the next time someone starts boasting about how many blocks they do in a day... "Well, I've just been focusing on the waterhole frequencies in the vicinity of Proxima Centauri..."