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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."
Bird Baths...
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.
What about using it or reselling it as a massive point to point wireless antenna?
1. Attach to tin foil hat
2. Read other people's minds.
3. ???
4. Profit!
Maybe you could use it to create some sort of device that would beam correct spellings into /. submissions?
Edward@Tomato - /home/Edward/ man woman
man: no entry for woman in the manual.
"Qua!?"
you could use the dish to setup a amateur radio astronomy listening post.
Nothing quite like a giant pudding bowl?
This may be a bit redneck, but when I was a kid a friend had one. We took it down and used it as a big saucer sled to pull behind a truck in winter. It was great fun.
or cover it with tinfoil to run a sterling engine??
Since it's parabolic, you can can, with the addition of some reflectivity, use it to concentrate the powers of the sun, suitable for culinary and other low-heat chemistry.
Strap on a chain, paint it gold and wear it around your neck Flava Flav style
...and go sledding!
I just found a new sig.
SOLAR DEATH RAY!
Or I guess maybe something useful like a thermal generator, or such.
Bird Baths...
(damned Post Anonymously button... and damned "slowdown" verbiage when I didn't follow the /logic...)
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
Loud sex.
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.
-- The act of censorship is always worse than whatever is being censored. Always.
Cover it with mirrors or tinfoil. Cook burgers with the sun.
Yes there 'r'. :)
Go over to lyngsat.com and see what you can see. Satellite TV is far more than what the media companies are willing to sell you.
Just give it the Mythbusters treatment and make an "Archimedes Death Ray" (AKA, very-short-range-small-stuff-burner-but-only-on-very-sunny-days.)
Official Heretic from the "Church of Global Warming". Proven right thanks to whistle blowers. AGW = Flat Earth Theory
Either grow a massive hedge in an orb shape and stick this dish in the top section just like the DeathStar from StarWars or just do the same thing (sans hedge) with paper mache.
You moved your mouse. Please restart Windows for changes to take effect.
*nt*
I built one of these with an old dish a while back and was surprised how well it worked. I used it as a cheap proof-of-concept antenna for a 0.7 mile point to point wireless link and connected it to my laptop and NetStumbler to test signal strength. Fun project
Pete
I've always wanted to do EME - Earth Moon Earth with one. I want to use a 802.11 wifi card; but I have not the skill to program such a packet bounce. Hardware is the easy part.
I don't want a pickle; I just want a Motor-Cycle! A four foot cop arrived with a five foot gun!
One of my coworkers turned a dish and cover into a UFO on chains with a fog-machine, lights, and a mirror ball rigged inside.
He could lower the ball, turn on the fog, and party.
Do it up right and you could have a coffee-table on chains that, when raised, turns into the center of your party rig.
"we could fill it with bean dip and get some giant fritos..."
---
Is this the MPAA? Is this the RIAA? Is this the DMCA? I thought it was the USA!
well i overheard a neighbor talking to a friend about how he had harvested a whole bunch of BUDs from his backyard. He just said he was planning on smoking them; I'm not sure what that means but good luck with your search.
Giant laser beam!
Some people in the physics dept here at uni, took an old parabolic dish and made a radio telescope with it. Big semester project.
My favorite Family Guy episode: I Never Met the Dead Man.
Stewie: "Fare thee well, Broccoli."
Will still be a while making it though... I've been a year on an addition to the house and cleaning up the mess that the previous owner left.
I'm not anti-social, I'm anti-idiot.
Literally.
We had an old 8ft dish. My dad and I covered
the mounting holes with stainless mesh, filled
it with good soil and compost and planted a
nice selection of butterfly/hummingbird flowers
in it.
This kept certain plants from roaming beyond
the area desired. Use plants that trellis or
hang to cover the ugly sides/underside.
That oversized planter has been going for over
a decade now. The plants do a good job of
reseeding every year.
-AI
For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion
If it's one of those old C-Band sat dishes, you can use it for radio astronomy. Probably one of the cheaper ways to get into it actually.
The maximum length of a standard USB cable is 5.0 meters (16.4 ft).
So, no that wouldn't work. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
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
Grote Reber
Colorless green Cthulhu waits dreaming furiously.
You should build a radio telescope! I tried to build a single-dish telescope for my university's imaging science department on co-op last summer. I managed to get all of the parts I needed except the BUD to use as an antenna.
Still don't know if anyone ever finished it :(
Obviously, nobody's thought of its best alternative use yet: Teach mice to skateboard and open a whisker circus!
Paint it black, make a giant white-gloved hand reaching out of the ground and tell the neighborhood kids you buried Mickey Mouse in your backyard...fun for the whole family.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
I began to build one a while back but held off because I didn't know enough DSP at the time...
:)
And I wanted to write the processing portion
http://www.signalone.com/radioastronomy/telescope/
http://www.radiosky.com/faq.html
http://www.mtmscientific.com/radiotelescope.html
http://www.radiotelescopebuilder.com/
One of these days, I'll put that 3 meter dish to use.
point at the sun and evaporate pennies.
Awesome suntan... or in my case, burn; but it might work for some!
Stupid sexy Flanders.
Give it the Scrapheap Challenge treatment, combine it with an old CRT TV, a microwave oven and a generator to build a high-powered fossil fuel death ray!!!
I don't therefore I'm not.
Find a ham radio operator and/or club and donate it!
Those old big dishes are a great way to get into Moonbounce, aka EME (Earth-Moon-Earth). Bouncing signals off the moon to communicate is way neat. You can also bounce you signal off the moon and listen to your echo. The challenge e these days is to get a signal to the other station with as little power as possible, with some operators having contacts with as little as 100 watts.
Don't know where to find a local club? Here: www.arrl.org
http://www.bambi.net/
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Turn it up-side-down and use it fror a roof over a porch swing
http://www.mountlehmanllamas.com/feeder-sat-dish.html
Cover it with aluminum foil and make a solar cooker
http://www.backyardnature.net/j/solardsh.htm
Cover it in mirrors and melt/combust an amazing verity of things
http://www.cockeyed.com/incredible/solardish/dish23.shtml
Giant Snow sled
Big Flower planter
Garage Sale Sign
Fish Pond
We are Dead Stars looking back Up at the Sky
I say combine two ideas: bird bath and solar death ray.
Yum, BBQ!
Upholster it to make a combination papasan chair and satellite dish!
>;k
You can throw a mic in it and have people sing into it. It's a very interesting recording technique.
"Don't meddle in the affairs of a patent dragon, for thou art tasty and good with ketchup." ~ohcrapitssteve
You could also:
-73, de n1ywb
www.n1ywb.com
I was thinking the same thing. I remember reading about some guy who took a bunch of the disco ball mirrors and glued them to the dish and put a steam generator (coil of copper pipe basically) where the antenna was. He used the pressure to drive a steam turbine or engine and got a few KW of power, as long as the sun was shining and he continued to "steer" the dish to point at the sun all day. If I remember correctly he used a fluid that evaporated at a lower temp than water to help get more power from the heat.... but that was a while back and I have a memory leakage issue. Or do what we did and bury it for the base of a fountain/water feature. It made for a nice round dish to put the fountain in the middle of, but ours was an old solid style and not the mesh kind. Good luck!
My father and I took our 8foot sat dish, dug a huge hole in the ground, layered it with a thick rubber liner and made a fishpond with it. Sure sounds redneck when you explain it to someone, but I'll be damned if the final result wasn't pretty.
Yank out the transceiver, put in a heat exchanger in its place. Use sheets of 1/2 " peel and stick mirror tiles to cover the dish surface. Pick up a small 4 sided pyramid, put photocells on all 4 sides, and use a couple of differential op-amps to determine which side has the most light hitting it.
Use those two signals to run the motor controls to aim the dish. It will always point at the brightest spot in the sky. A small pump feeding fluid (such as connonseed oil) thru the heat exchanger, to a large thermal well( say a buried concrete container full of steel slugs), will gather all the heat you need. Use the secondary loop from the thermal well for your home heating, hot water, cooking. etc. (cottonseed oil will easily heat to 400F)
Many people have used woks etc as Wifi dishes. Now turn the tables. Use the dish as a huge wok and go for the stir fry world record.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
mount a microphone at its focal point and aim that sucker (carefully) at whatever you would like to hear.
I also second, third, or whatever the notion of a death ray,
take a microwave oven apart and get creative with the +10 ray of amana.
Unix, an obscure operating system developed by bored researchers in an attempt to get a better game playing experience.
C-Band is still in fairly active use in the US and around the world -- you could (gasp!) use it for what it was built for. It's the only way to get truly ala carte TV service, and usually costs a lot less than the alternatives (not to mention all of the free stuff out there). You'd probably need a new receiver to get digital channels, but I've spoken with plenty of MythTV users who have C-band setups.
Do you really need reason for beer? Wingman Brewers
Face it Convex side up, put it on a pole...Instant Umbrella for the picnic table.
"A REAL computer has ONE speed and the only powersaving it permits is when you pull the power leads out of the back!"
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.
Luke, help me take this mask off
Set up a WiFi link to the moon.
-R
It's parabolic, so if you can drag it inside, make it into an elliptical reflector dish.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deflector_shield
(Or, you could re-enact "Singing In The Rain" if you combine it with an old antenna pole. If you were very strong.)
No mod points, no meta-moderating/Firehose/all the other free work Slashdot wants me to do.
Lower the dish so its pointing directly at your neighbours house.
When they enquire about it; Tell them you can now read their email.
Refuse to elaborate.
My shrink's neighbour has a dish pointed at the shrinks office. He says the paranoid delusionals love it. I love it too. Total coincidence.
I use to have a funny sig, but slash cut it off, and I forgot what the punchline was.
make a barbeque
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jury_nullification
I used my old satellite dish as a sled. It wasn't one of the big ugly ones. It's an old PrimeStar cable dish. It didn't work well though :(. My grandpa used his old DishNetwork dish as a bird feeder, he just took the dish off, and faced it up. Works well, actually.
From your link to wikipedia:
Although a single cable is limited to 5 meters, the USB specification permits up to five USB hubs in a long chain of cables and hubs. Consequently the maximum possible signalling distance is 30 meters, using six 5-meter cables and five hubs. In actual use, the last hub is a more convenient endpoint since some USB devices include built-in cables intended to directly connect to a hub, setting the maximum useful signalling distance at 25 meters.
Also note that the maximum length of 5m is due to the standard allowing for a cable delay of less than 5.2 ns. This means that a 5m cable will be under the 26 ns allowed delay. If a cable introduces less delay then it would be possible to use a longer cable.
My friend turned her old "BUD" into a flower bed. It was lined with plastic and filled with soil. The elevated flower garden is certainly a point of interest.
If you have a scanner capable of receiving the frequencies, I believe you can sometimes use them to receive microwave signals. I just remember reading it somewhere, maybe I'm wrong...
Need an automatic screenshot taker? Try here.
create a giant anemometer!
Si vis pacem, para bellum! For evil to succeed good men need only do nothing!
Check out this option: I made a two story treehouse out of recycled materials and included a fibreglass satellite dish as a dome roof. http://www.treehousebydesign.com/gallery_canim5.html Unexpected benefit is that the sounds from the forest floor are collected by the dish and focused right near my head while in bed. Sounds like critters are scurrying around the edge of the bed and water is lapping at my feet.
This is getting complicated, but stick lots of individually steerable little mirrors inside. You can imagine the rest :)
Tsunami -- You can't bring a good wave down!
I have no idea of the actual feasibility of this, but I remember in the early 1980s standing on a rooftop in NYC with a handheld, hand made parabolic antenna, a ham radio, and an Apple ][+ and watching the Apple draw in blocks from a really low-rez 1-bit digital signal from one of the early exploratory probes. For some more recent examples, see here or learn to talk to ham radio satellites here or Google your own!
A hero is someone who knows when to run away. I am a hero. -Trent the Uncatchable
is it big enough to be part of a CAVE http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cave_Automatic_Virtual_Environment ?
perfectly designed for that purpose. You even have the pole mount, and the beginnings of the sun-tracker. Alternate energy, in all the news and stuff...
If you want something less challenging, inverted, umbrella fashion, and covered with some tarp or cloth or fiberglass or whatever, makes a nice sunshade over a picnic table.
Turn it the other way, plaster it, you have the basis for a garden pond.
Get two of them, arrange them together half open, so it looks like a giant clamshell on the beach, you get the old lady to put on a mermaid costume and lounge around in there provocatively, and snap some pics and give us the links plz! ;)
Make a dome screen from it. The parabola is perfect for this purpose. See http://local.wasp.uwa.edu.au/~pbourke/projection/domemirror/uprightdome2/
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.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
...and use them for tire rims on a Hummer. Sure, they're a bit undersized, but it will be green and stylish. Plus it might confuse the Hell out of Police Radar!
Random Thoughts From A Diseased Mind (Not For Dummies)
My friend had one of these monsters left on his property. 8' diameter. He built a pentagon gazebo and this made a perfect roof for it.
I am want to work on a Solar concentrator that will spin a Sterling engine http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stirling_engine which drives an electric generator. Just mount a Stirling engine to the focal point with a reflective surface http://www.sprol.com/?p=265 that concentrates the heat, and add a sun tracker system to it and you will have free electricity for life! Of course how much power you generate depends on the dish diameter, your geographical location, and the reflective surface you use. In any case a Stirling is more efficient that the current photovoltaic technology we have available today. I would be doing this now except I don't have the "reflective surface" and the required sun tracker hardware in place yet. My tiny little 6" lathe just won't spin a six foot disk no matter how hard I try, and nobody seems to be throwing these big dishes out when I am conveniently available.
Make a homebrew SETI at Home, you can verify that the govt. isn't hiding any ET signals from us. :-)
"Enjoy what you're doing! If it becomes drudgery, you're doing it wrong!" - Jim Butterfield
The curved dishes make decent ponds for birds to splash in. Cover the edges with rocks or something else decorative to hide what it really is.
Take it a step further, put some kind of ceramic container in the focal point and smelt stuff.
Tsunami -- You can't bring a good wave down!
Oh, you have to be kidding me. Someone should take away your Slashdot license. :)
What would a geek do with a big honkin' parabolic reflector? All kinds of things.
1) The most obvious, pick up old satellite signals. I'm pretty sure (but not positive) that the C and KU bands are still in use. I used to watch live feeds for various news stations, along with all kinds of weird broadcasting. It was my first exposure to local TV in other areas.
2) "Free to air". I won't say anything else about that, it's up to you to research.
3) Listen in on unencrypted government traffic. There was a news story about this a few years ago. Some folks in England were intercepting not-so-secret US Government recon flights over Eastern Europe. (If they were to be really secret, they would have been encrypted and on different satellites). Just because the antenna normally points on one arc, it doesn't mean that's the only things to listen to.
4) One heck of a 802.11b/g antenna. :) Watch out for the FCC though, that's a lot of gain. You may need to put a finer mesh screen over your existing panels. Check your wavelengths.
5) Parabolic reflector + big light source (sun) = quick fried lunch. Cover it in mylar, and don't look into it directly. Better yet, don't be in front of it. It's all natural, and doesn't hurt the environment much. :)
6) Parabolic reflector + microphone = really big parabolic microphone. Since you still have the mylar on from #5, all you have to do is mount the microphone. Well, you may want to use something less optically reflective, like saran wrap, unless you want to risk cooking your $5 microphone. :)
7) Parabolic reflector + Microwave oven magnetron = trouble. Your 802.11b/g transmitter may have been putting off 0.025W (0.200W if you bought a good card). What happens when you pump 700W+ into the dish? :) How about a dozen magnetrons aimed into a smaller dish at the focal point, to reflect back down into the main dish first? 8.4KW and the gain of your antenna. You could cook your dinner from a few miles away. Don't aim it at friends, enemies, or anything you don't want to mess up pretty quick.
8) Get another one the same size, cover them both in mylar, and have your own UFO parked in the back yard. Sell the pictures to the National Enquirer, and then sell the UFO on eBay with a signed copy of that edition.
and on to the boring options.
9) Scrap metal?
10) Pull the panels, and you'll have really big snow shoes.
11) Pull the panels for snow sled racing this winter.
12) Pull the panels, Cover the convex side with styrofoam and fiberglass, and make some totally rad knee boards.
Enjoy!
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
Would it be possible to improve recpetion (i.e., stop the digital signal from going straight to shit every time it rains) by attaching a DirectTV reciever to a BUD?
(Do not sign anything.) -- Fell, Planescape: Torment
Suspend beneath a big helium balloon (dark colored), illuminate with lots of flashing lights and turn loose after sunset. Await numerous reports of UFO sightings.
Have gnu, will travel.
My sister-in-law made a goldfish pond out of a dish that was littering their yard.
Maybe try A SATELLITE DISH? There are 3rd world countries are building these things out of coke cans! Sure you could get some use out of yours, or maybe give it to some poor amazonian tribe who need to learn how to count by watching some Sesame Street!
I use my old satellite as an altar for human sacrifices but a birdbath sounds nice.
You can get the DVB card, and install magic software for it then you can get free Pay TV.
there are few magic plugins for mythtv and you can get dishnetwork free all digital
http://radio-astronomy.org/
http://www.nitehawk.com/rasmit/ras.html
or even SETI:
http://www.setileague.org/
If it's not plastic, just pull out the electronics, stand it up facing straight up. Instant elevated fire pit.
A small Orthodox church in Columbia SC has one as a dome. They started out in a small steel-frame building and figured out a way to use this for a frame for the dome. For real...
The National Weather Service has a data downlink on AMC4 with about 6mbit/sec of weather data...NEXRAD radar data, satellite imagery, surface observations, and more. Requires a C-band dish, an LNB (about $35 for a decent one), and PCI DVB-S card ($50ish on eBay).
Search for NOAAport.
Ingest software: http://www.noaaport.net/
One year with NOAAport: http://www.geo-web.org.uk/noaaport.pdf
Receiving with a PCI DVB-S card: http://www.hwic.net/projects/weather/noaaport/twinhan_1020/
You could fall asleep in it and broadcast your dreams all over the world.
"Nobody knows the age of the human race, but everybody agrees that it is old enough to know better." - Unknown
I've been thinking about using our old mini dish and some microwave parts to make a mini death ray. Maybe you can use several microwaves and make a mega death ray... Or how about a giant steel drum head? Combine the two! Attract people with some island music, then cook them!
For some free to air and various other obscure channels. I don't know if any of that will change next year.
It's /., not ./!
Your ad here.
A parabolic dish by definition cannot be an elliptical dish. You have been warned.
You could proceed with the Alan Parsons project, turn it into a giant "laser", put it on the moon and hold the United States ransom for one million bajillion quitillion septillion dollars
I have one of these beasts at a summer cabin we bought about 4 years ago. I promised the kids that when I took it down they could try to paddle it across the lake. Well, 2 weeks ago it came down, so I'm bringing a fiberglass repair kit to fill the holes and then its going down to the lake!
If it can work as a death ray then a more useful hack would be to heat water. it will be more fun if it has a motor as some of these did.
not sure how difficult it may be to control the dish with a computer so it always focuses sun to a point where u can have a metal container holding water.
Got any links for this?
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
http://www.popularmechanics.com/home_journal/workshop/4272846.html?page=9
Occasionally a ham radio operator interested in UHF will take one off your hands. Check with a local radio club.
Or start a Mongolian BBQ.
Give a man a fish and you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, and he'll say "WHERE'S MY FISH, YOU IDIOT?"
It's not hard.
No sig today...
Use it for kids to play wall ball on...the ball will always come back to them :P
What else can happen when an unstoppable force collides with an immovable object?
Sorry, but I have to put a plug in here for my project. I am working at Eastern Michigan University on a project known as EARTHS or Education Astronomy using Radio Telescopes in High Schools. The goal of the project is to build small radio telescopes that can be put in the hands of high schools for students to learn with, while also being paired into a statewide array of telescope to form an experimental very long baseline array over the lower half of the state of Michigan. One idea to keep the costs of the project low was to use old satellite dishes, and we are looking for people that may be willing to donate their old dishes for our first prototype being built currently. If anyone is interested in doing so or would like more information on the project, I can be contacted at crazywhiteboy311 at gmail.com, just use the heading EARTHS in your email.
The one in my neighbor's back yard is made of solid sheet steel, weighs a ton and is about 8 feet in diameter. You could stir-fry enough Chinese food in it to feed the whole neighborhood. Hmmm, might be a good way to get rid of all those pesky feral cats roaming the neighborhood too.
A really huge Big Wheel Trike. Use two small dishes for the back wheels.
Or speaker frames for a boom box sub woofer?
What?
Use it as part of the primary weapon for your own personal death star.
I used to build little space hover crafts out of my extra LEGO dishes.
I lined an old satellite with a bunch of small tiles I made from cutting a few glass mirror tiles. I then mounted a grill on the end of the LMB and aimed it at the sun. It made a pretty good solar cooker!
Oh, yeah! Wise guy, huh? Woob woob woob woob! Nyuk! Nyuk!
Hey, what do you mean? Doesn't anybody broadcast on C-band satellite anymore? Damn things change fast. :)
- James
A company in Washington already patented and makes these and is testing them for NASA. Their first market tests are being done this fall in the southwest and then they will be releasing products to other others next summer.Infinia corp is their name.
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is mine.
Chrome it up and cook the mother of all ants.
Table-ized A.I.
Immigrants often want to listen to broadcasts from their home country and mainstream services often don't provide such, especially from smaller countries. A big dish may be able to capture such.
Table-ized A.I.
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
Me looking at access log and seeing wireless hack attempts... Looks at old C band dish and old microwave oven.. Hmm let's scan for the intruder and see if that laptop likes a KW of focused power in the WiFi band!
The truth shall set you free!
is this channel still being broadcast? that's why I'd hook up a dish :)
would make a good solar concentrator if covered with folium or smth. with some solar tracking method and photovoltaic cell in the focus you would get decent amount of green power
Roof for back yard gazebo
Maurice W. Hilarius Voice: (778) 347-9907
We have in Chile this thing called "asado al disco" (Dish barbecue). It's like a spanish paella dish but without rice, just some veggies and lots of meat and sausages... and the "disco" usually is made out of... you know
The geek's way to BBQ. Period
http://www.flickr.com/photos/11654406@N00/442904516/in/set-72157594427048139/
http://xkcd.com/316/
Place a microphone at the focal point, and with a plated dish(not mesh) you could find out quite a lot about how your neighbours think of people with mysteriously moving dish antennae.
My tiny little 6" lathe just won't spin a six foot disk no matter how hard I try
There there, it's ok, I'm sure you make up for it in other ways.
Wrongo!
The only difference between c-band and ku-band dishes is in the feed-horn. because KU band is a much higher frequency, the aperture is much smaller, and thus a different sizing WG fitting is required to mate with the LNB. Of course, there is always the issue of polarity as well, linear and circular polarized feeds have different setups.
The dish itself is just a big surface area to collect signal and bounce it into the middle. You can get c band ku band l band, and pretty much all microwave frequencies (hence the polularity for ISM hack-jobs)
the above is my personal opinion and does not necessarily reflect that of the little voices in my head
get some aluminum foil and roll out your own solar cooker.
Mount it on one of those gas-lift platforms and turn it into an interesting chair.
Alternatively, you can run it through a photocopier at 40% and use it as an angle-poise lamp. It'd be a nice conversation starter at parties.
Those using pirated Tinysoft signatures(TM) are a real threat to society and should all be thrown in jail.
0) Invert
1) Attach to vertical post
2) Cover with palm fronds
3) Shade
It's not a bug, it's a feature
I could make a hat... a broach... a pterodactyl.
:)
Or it could be one hell of a reflector for a directional wifi antenna.
Come to think of it I could use it get a better signal for my Hughes satellite connection, just send it to me.
Of course I didn't RTFA... why would I do that? You really are new here aren't you? Don't let my UID fool you.
We had some old woks and we did a similar thing?: drill a hole in the base, fill with soil and gravel and plant alpines - the result a very nice wokkery.
If it's one of the really big old dishes - turn it upside down and add four supports - it makes a great trellis or gazebo! A friend of mine in New Hampshire has one.
This is slashdot. I can't believe no one has suggested frisbee? Imagine the dog trying to catch that motherfucker of a dish! Please don't bother me with any pesky details like excessive weight. Giant drunk fucking frisbee for all!!! Yay!
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
Just make a large bonfire around the base and use it as a huge wok. Cook for the whole state.
Contact the SETI network and offer it as an extra receiver. Or find more people that own one, and create a distributed radio telescope (or join the either the us or the global network of radio telescopes).
Talk to vger. It can get quite lonely out there when people at NASA stop talking to vger.
I think it would make an excellent place for out avian friends to stop and rest. Think about all the ways you could abuse scale around it and really twist up passer by's heads.
He was likely bluffing. DirectTV uses NDS Videoguard, which AFAIK to this day remains unbroken. There are other networks out there that can be broken, and many of them require buying a "Common-Interface" card (basically a PCI-PCMCIA adapter) and a decrytion module.
I am disappointed that no one has recommended that this dish be used on a car as a defelctor dish :( Gotta deflect things like... robins, sparrows, crows, kittens, and butterflies from hitting you car! DAMN YOU FOR DIRTYING MY CAR!
-- Josh
"Whoopie! Man, that may have been a small one for Neil, but that's a long one for me!" - Pete Conrad
A very small, very shallow koi pond, of course...
Last night I played a blank tape at full volume. The mime next door went nuts.
Use it for Amateur Radio Astronomy.
What does a parabolical dish do? It concentrates parallel radiation (a.k.a. radio waves) into the focal point of the dish -- that's where your sat receiver typically resides.
:-)
... well, wherever you choose to point it at :-)
Why not the other way round: replace the sat receiver by some wave *emitter* -- the the wave generator from an old microwave oven comes to mind
And point that emitter to radiate towards the dish. The dish will then reflect the radiation coming from the dot-like emitter sitting at the focal point nicely into parallel waves going out *from* the dish to
Pigeons on your neighbour's roof come to mind spontaneously...
Just try not to fry the electronics of passing by planes on clear days, will you... 'd be gainst the law!
'nuf said
-- Many men would appreciate a woman's mind more if they could fondle it
Maybe you'll be able to watch tv during rainstorms.
-- Many men would appreciate a woman's mind more if they could fondle it
Amateur Radio Operators have spectrum allocated into the hundreds of Gigahertz. You can participate in fun things like Amateur Radio Satellite operations, moonbounce, meteor scatter, and other fun ways to communicate.
Check out www.arrl.org for info about getting a license and about Ham Radio in general.
Margarita?
Wasted away again in margaritaville, searchin' for my lost shaker of salt....
I call it 'The Aristocrats'
and sell it to this guy.
Both of these have been mentioned elsewhere but not much. These things are getting hard to find so I wanted to say it too before it gets broken. I'd look for either a Ham radio operator with a big back yard (They use it to talk to sattelites or to bounce signals off the moon) or a college astronomy department who could make a radio telescope out of it. Or, maybe someone might actually want to watch tv w/ it. There are many more plentiful things you can make a birdbath or flower pot out of. Maybe an old 10mpg truck or something? Unless you think you would really use a solar cooker... Might make a nice grill that never needs propane refills.
Cover the holes in plastic wrap and you've got a mighty fine cereal dish!
It'll make a great salad bowl for a BBQ with your friends.
Load it onto the back of a truck, head into the mountains, and recreate the shield-sled scene from Willow.
I used a discarded BUD, a modified "cable over the air" converter, a SSB radio receiver, and Spectrum Lab to listen to and detect the mars pathfinder probe as well as amateur satellites and lots of other fun things in the 2.4ghz area of the spectrum orbiting the planet. GOES image products were a favorite. Careful using it as a transmission antenna for Wi-Fi without knowing what you are doing. an 8 foot dish could probably give you 32dB of gain at 2.4Ghz, enough to make your EIRP from your 25mW router dangerous for a few feet. Much more so if you crank up the output power by unlocking the device or worse using an amplifier, which is illegal without a license (for the reason that it is in fact dangerous and potentially hazardous to other people). Considering the amount of interest in Mars and equipment in place right now there is probably some interesting eavesdropping to be done.
Coat it with aluminum, polish it, and attach a powerful lamp in place of the reciever.
aim it at your neighbors and fire it up.
I will not give in to the terrorists. I will not become fearful.
http://www.g4tv.com/techtvvault/features/35723/USB_Limits.html?article_key=35723
Make a gazebo with the inverted dish. Example:
http://www.ranum.com/fun/projects/gazebo/index.html
Just be careful with that microwave oven. Those magnetrons can be dangerous.
Happy Hunting!
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
A C-Band dish with a digital receiver has access to more programming, a better signal and lower prices for programming than anything Dish or Direct offer. It even gets HDTV! I have been using one for 8 years, and wouldn'y trade for the little dish product on a bet! Use it as intended!! Much better!
I spend less than $100 USD per year and get 4,000 channels off my BUD. Some are digital stations others are analog -- just like cable and other satellite technologies. There also HD options for BUD but I don't have the hardware for that. I am happy with the local HD programing I get from rabbit ears.
So, no that wouldn't work. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB [wikipedia.org]
I was thinking there would be some kind of issue with a long USB cable. Even if the potential length wasn't an issue, I wouldn't know where to begin to purchase cable of much length like that without it being a little expensive.
After a few moments of thinking on the matter, it would probably be better to just make a weatherproof box for a WRT54G, install a good command line IOS on it, slap a few scanning tools on it, and use it as a bridge/client.
Most of the old analog channels are gone, but the list of FTA (free to air) DVB digital channels is growing.
Here's a list of available FTA channels on C Band http://www.global-cm.net/MPEGlistCBandUS.html and on Ku Band http://www.global-cm.net/MPEGlistKuBandUS.html
You'll have to replace your analog LNB/Feedhorn with something that is compatible with modern DVB/FTA receivers. The cost of a new digital LNBF (LNB + Feedhorn) is under $25. There are a lot of DVB/FTA (set top box) receivers available in the $85 to $150 range.
...will it blend ?
http://www.willitblend.com/
Put a speaker or microphone in the focus, hang a bed sheet over it so no one can see what it is. Then whisper instructions to the crazy people down on the street. Play music only they can hear.
Or point it at the neighbors house and listen in.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Paint the dish with a message or advertisement and then place it in a highly visible location. /.
Some examples:
1. If you throw a ball to someone, chances are good that they will throw it back to you
2. If you lived here you could already be reading
3. For creative ways to use your old dish, call 555-2134
Fill that sucker with cushions and candy bars and you have one kick-ass high-tech throne!
found a good use for an BUD.
http://www.texva.com/midwestern-states/frontpage_files/frankfort2.jpg
photosMy Photostream
...Deathstar!
A treat to eat, in a puppet that's neat!
Build a radio telescope. Check out the Haystack project at MIT http://web.haystack.mit.edu/ I built one back in 2002 for a class project. ~$2000, but worth it. The software for it was written in Java.
Disclaimer: The opinions and actions of the US Gov't are in no way representative of those held by this author or its ci
I only see blonde, brunette, redhead.
PM
We use those old dishes at our cottage for going ridiculous speeds down steep hills covered in snow.
Spray-paint it gold, mount it on a small post, and then throw a LAN party with the Big Cup as the award for whoever gets the most frags in your game of choice.
Of course, you won't want to TELL anybody about the award beforehand, lest they cheat by killing themselves.
Alternately, go ahead and tell them. Then really it'll be a contest to see how LOW anybody's score could get.
Any sufficiently simple magic can be passed off as mere advanced technology.
I know a local woodsball / scenario paintball field that uses the big dish satellites as bunkers. They flip them over and pile sand bags in a 3/4 circle beneath the dome and use it as a pill box fortification. That's the best use I can think of, though not very technical.
I spotted one of the black wire mesh ones mounted on 4x4 posts as an umbrella over some flowers that like partial shade in rural Illinois.
"Frisbee," is a trademark of the Mattel toy company. Someone might get the world's largest summons.
These are perfect 1,000 foot targets for rifles with open sights.
.30-30.
Depending on construction, you can ring them like a bell with a
--j!m
-- often wrong; never in doubt
I'm stunned no one has yet mentioned it's use as an acoustic concentrator.
You could use it like one of those bionic ears, but the db gain would be absurdly high. Replace the LNA with a high-quality microphone.
THEN, you could point it at something REALLY interesting.. like... uh... a pigeon, or... uh... a squirrel...
And hear what they REALLY have to say... ...heh... I knew there was something conspiratorial about those squirrels... Don't get me started about the chipmonks.
Use it for observing the radiation emitted by passing communication satellites, particularly in th 4-8Ghz range.
Ages ago, during the first Iraq war (remember? we did this before...) there were reports about people using UHF scanners and picking fighter pilot air-to-ground communications (UHF band, using non-encrypted FM voice) which the US Navy FLEETSAT satellites inadvertently transponded.
This will likely require non-trivial mods to your BUD (replace the LNB and feed with a UHF helical antenna for starters), plus FLEETSATs are no longer in service, the US now uses UFO satellites (no kidding! thats a real acronym), but they too are just dumb transponders.
Get a UHF scanner, dig around and find out the frequency plans and orbital positions of the UFOs, and see what you can hear.
15 seconds of Googling turned up this:
http://www.instructables.com/id/How-to-build-a-strikeheliostatstrike-paraboli/
You can build a parabolic reflector out of whatever you want, as big as you have the room for.
My father-in-law pointed his straight up and drilled a hole in it so water would drain. He filled it with soil, and now grows water melons in it. I love seeing him get the step later out to pick water melons.
in red and white concentric circles. Add a white star in the middle on a blue background. Strap it to your arm and go fight crime. Just watch out for large blocks of ice, and don't get assassinated.
"Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana." - Marx
Just be careful with that microwave oven. Those magnetrons can be dangerous.
Thanks for posting the warning. My post was humor. I used to repair the ovens in the electronics shop, so I am aware, however the causal reader of Slashdot should heed the warning. They typically operate at about 4KV. If the HV doesn't get you right away, the effects from exposure to the radiation or dust from a smashed magnetron could produce lasting lingering health problems.
The truth shall set you free!
There's a house in Washington that's turned them into a UFO landing site in the front yard (you can see them in bird's eye view). Very fun to see in winter when they're lit up with blue Christmas lights.
Neil
If you could come up with two large dishes, flip one over and attach it to the other to make a flying saucer. Then half bury it in the back yard, get some green men dummies and put them around the saucer.
Best regards.
at the source vs. the reciever. w/ the range of a normal hotspot router limited to 1/4 mile, if you lived on the high edge of a city that might work well, if you didn't, I doubt there would be enough signal to collect at that distance.
(hears a whisper in his ear...) What? an 8ft. bud?
Oh, nvm, give it a shot!
How much is your data worth? Back it up now.
"i'm still not doing anything tomorrow right now!"
How much is your data worth? Back it up now.
They make external antena connectors for cell phones. You could point it arround till you get 4 bars, then lock in that position and run the cable into your house, and tap that to a relay and maybe finally see if the verizon network guys show up or not.
How much is your data worth? Back it up now.
Leave it on their lawn with a note, "This BUD's for you!"
This is a tautology.
If you make a giant solar cooker, make sure to try the opposite too... use space as a heat sink and try to make ice.
http://solarcooking.org/plans/funnel.htm
Mod coward up!
Also since the dish would be parabolic, the sun would always be focused on the tank, the only question is how much. A proper sun-tracking setup would be difficult, it would be better to have it run on a pre-programmed path throughout the day. Also a good arrangement would be to have the tank in a fixed position, and have the dish on a swing mechanism that rotates around the tank, therefore reducing the load on the motor. The dish would have to be connected by rods to an axle on the opposite side of the tank. A tie rod mechanism could be used to adjust the angle as the dish travels back and forth.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
"Lots" is a relative term... Sure, there's a large number of channels, but the vast majority of them are either non-English language, shop at home, religious, etc., etc.
Once you eliminate those, you've mostly just got some crappy local stations with re-runs of 20+ year old shows... Of course you'll get at least one station from each major network, so it's an improvement over OTA (analog) antenna, but it's certainly not "lots" compared to cable or DBS.
There are, of course, notable exceptions that make it worthwhile. I'd rather watch BBC World than any other 24/7 news channel (admittedly, that's setting the bar pretty low) and there's really no other way to get it. PBS provides several channels with different programming (on Ku), which is the majority of what I watch.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Whoever said that the BUD market is dead obviously hasn't looked around. Sure, the BUD market is about dead, but let's face it, Dish and DirecTV gotta thier channels somehow. The majority of major cable feeds, are, believe it or not, still being sent via analog. Sure, there's a large number of channels being done in digital, but there's still some analog feeds out there. You also have what's known as wild-feeds in which you can get some cool stuff. I can watch The Simpsons for 2 hours at 4AM because it's the syndicated feed. There is also a large number of Free To Air channels you can get with the thing. Sure, they're complex, but I'm sure if you look around you'll find the information you need. I mean, you could do a birdbath..or create some kind of "redneck gazebo", but you're almost better off just setting it up in your yard, aligning and programming positions, and scanning the air to see what you get. www.lyngsat.com tells you what birds are up there and what they're broadcasting.
If you've got a shitload of mostly-unused land, you could use them for solar focusing to increase solar power output of a panel. Or if you're in a canyon you can put them on the canyon ridge (if you also own the ridge) for a similar use...
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
A relatively simple project that I did in highschool was turn my dish into an 802.11 unidirectional antenna. I could pick up wifi for miles. On the down side, I walked in front of it, so now I'm sterile and permanantly tanned... Your mileage may vary though.
Once you eliminate those, you've mostly just got some crappy local stations with re-runs of 20+ year old shows... Of course you'll get at least one station from each major network, so it's an improvement over OTA (analog) antenna, but it's certainly not "lots" compared to cable or DBS.
I actually enjoy those old re-runs and some of the original programming like "unreliable sources" on RTN (Retro Network). RTN, CW, and NBC programming is not available in my area. I found an old Primestar dish on the curb, hooked it up and aimed it at G18-Ku to see if I could receive anything. I ended up with 23 watchable channels after I filtered out the Spanish, AC3 audio, and encrypted channels. It's a nice supplement to OTA. I'll be adding C Band to my system after I update the analog LNB with one that's digital compatible.
I grew up with free TV and can't see paying the cable company $80 a month for the 10 cable channels (out of 200) that I actually watch.
If so, throw it away. It's probably warped, or will become warped during the removal process, and will thus be practically unusable.
You make me wish I had mod points...
If fiberglass, turn it over, patch the holes...instant Margaritaville umbrella! Or, you could patch the holes and attach it to your ski boat and let 5 of your friends try it out.
Give to a homeless guys who push around a shopping cart looking for metals to sell.
Typical, Alway's bringing the President into the conversation....
Huh?
i think maybe on make.com a while ago i saw something about converting them to radio astronomy, for cheap? maybe that was the small dishes? i'm too lazy to look it up.
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
or even better turn it into a giant garden plant vaporizer to get rid of all those pesky weeds
Add a spark-gap where the receiver is, slap on a laser, and mess with the reception. Maybe they'll take their naggy dog for a walk instead.