Alternative Uses For an Old Satellite Dish?

ya really writes "My family has one of those BUDs (Big Ugly Dishes) sitting in their back yard still. The other day they asked me if I would take it apart for them. Aside from simply recycling it, I was wondering if there are any alternatives for its use. It was one of the last made before DirectTV and Dish took over satellite broadcasting, and even has a digital receiver. I'd say it was made around 1996."

Comments

Use as... well...

[Anonymous Coward]

Bird Baths...

Obvious Answer: Wi-Fi Antenna

[slifox]

Satellite dishes make excellent directional 802.11 antennas.
Just remove the existing LNB from the dish and replace it with a homemade antenna, like a biquad, tuned for your band-of-interest (i.e. 2.4GHz ISM for wi-fi). Make sure you get a powerful (high RX sensitivity & high TX power) wireless card with an external antenna jack

Here is one project write-up, though I'm sure there are many others:
http://www.engadget.com/2005/11/15/how-to-build-a-wifi-biquad-dish-antenna/

Alternatively, keep the LNB, get a DVB capture card (PCI models go for $20-$80+ new), and use the dish to get FTA (free to air) satellite TV.
There are many communities for this kind of thing exactly, just search google for: FTA forum

I'd also take apart that digital receiver and reverse engineer the hardware as much as I could, just for kicks.
When you've gotten your hour of fun out of it, gut it for parts and move on to the next interesting project.

Great source for $0 TV

[Chandon Seldon]

Full size satellite dishes are still the best way to receive free television content, despite what the cable / pay satellite providers may imply in their advertising. If you don't have any place to put it yourself, it shouldn't be too difficult to find someone who would be willing to buy it.

C band

[jonfr]

Get a C band LNB and point to the next C band sat that is out there.

Plenty of C band channels out there. A good list is here.

http://www.lyngsat.com/america.html

Re:No, Mythbusters!

[RaguMS]

Rob from Cockeyed.com made his own Archimedes Death Ray and it worked:
http://www.cockeyed.com/incredible/solardish/dish01.shtml

TV, Ham radio, etc

[n1ywb]

I think the most obvious use would be to receive satellite TV, there's quite a bit of free stuff out there still. One of those fancy new mpeg receivers might be helpful. http://www.tech-faq.com/free-to-air-satellite.shtml

You could also:

• Communicate over satellites. There are many Amateur Radio satellites in orbit, and a BUD is great for talking to them: http://www.amsat.org/amsat-new/index.php
• Communicate via the earth-moon-earth path (EME, AKA moonbounce). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EME_(communications)
• Downlink NOAA weather satellites.
• Do radio astronomy: http://www.signalone.com/radioastronomy/telescope/
• Cover it in foil and have the worlds biggest solar hot dog cooker.

Obvious Answer: World Record Wi-Fi Antenna

[cmholm]

Some lads with a couple of your dishes cracked 125 miles during the 2005 Defcon Wi-fi distance shoot out. With your one dish on one end, and even the weakest built-in wifi antenna on the other, you can still create a solid network connection to the next County. If the other antenna is a run of the mill 15 or 24 dB directional wifi, you can really crank.

Free TV...

[evilviper]

I wrote about think kind of thing briefly in my journal a while back: http://slashdot.org/~evilviper/journal/189083

You've already got most everything you need... For the cost of a DVB-S receiver ($40 for a PCI model, $100 for a set-top-box), you can get quite a few free TV channels, in addition to raw feeds and other eccentric stuff. No monthly fees required. That doesn't include most "cable" channels, but much more than you'll get with an antenna.

Alternatively, if your dish was already fitted with a Ku-band LNBF, you could simply aim it at the DirecTV sat, and get a VERY strong signal, eliminating drop-outs even in the even of airplane flyovers, or extremely heavy rain fade.

But I would suggest throwing out the DirecTV subscription, and going with the big-ugly-dish you already own, and a 4DTV receiver. It's easily the cheapest way to get subscription channels, probably less than 1/4rd the price of DirecTV or DishNet. Ala carte subscriptions are a big advantage that could save you dramatically.