Datron dbs-3000-300

[pjtaxi]

We bought a used motorhome last year, in one of the storage bays there were electronic boxes for different systems. First was this Datron box witch was not hooked up, but the dish ant. is on the roof. Also there was a Direct Tv reciever, which is outdated compared to what we have in our home. It also has cabel and tripod. My question is could tlhe Datron that is mounted on the roof still be used, or should we try to take one of our house recievers from direct and hook up with tripod. The reason for asking is I can't see hauling this dish mounted on the roof if it is not useable. But worry about removing and roof leaks. Any info appreciated.

[oet2]

Can you give a little more detail on Datron box. Like does it have a meter on front ? It could be a field strength meter for dish alignment. Datron is big in the communication field. Police,military and first responder

[oet2]

I work with robots ect. daily. Datron been around for a long time. They are big in communication. Can you give a little more detail?

[oet2]

I pulled some old books and the Datron dbs3000 only works with direct tv because of the connector on back of back. It probely has a blue looking program card in the slot. From what I found the system is pretty old. Parts are no longer available. King controls make a great system but it is not cheap. Good luck

[pjtaxi]

Thanks for the responce. Tried to attach pic of box but didn't work. The box has a power switch, status llite stow lite and elevation meter on face. Back has power antenna ird cabel ird cord, and ant plug. You are probably right, to old but didn't want to remove from roof if it was useable. Any can't justify cost of King unit at this time. Might have to explore my diret tv tripod and reciever from house. Thanks again

[WindsorDave]

My situation was similar to yours. Our 2003 Monaco Windsor has a Datron 3000 antenna / receiver system. The receiver is indeed outdated as you pointed out. Ours had a Sony receiver (IRD) and it had a feedback cable that went to the antenna controller box. The purpose of the cable was to tell the antenna controller when the correct satellite was found and locked on to.

Though outdated, the IRD worked perfectly. That said we did not want to pay for another box on our DIRECTV subscription that would only be used in the coach. Also it did not have DVR/TiVo capability which is a must at our house.

So I unhooked the original Sony IRD and now just take one of the DVR's from the house out to the coach and hook it up in place of the original IRD when we go on a trip.

The functionality we lose is the ability of the antenna controller to find the correct DIRECTV satellite completely automatically. What happens when the controller switch is placed in the "VIEW" position is that the Dartron elevates and rotates the dish antenna and locks on to the first satellite it finds. If that's your satellite, you're good to go. If not you just momentarily rock the switch to the "STOW" position and return it to the "VIEW" position and it will move on to the next satellite. Repeat as necessary until it locks on to the correct satellite.

This is all in standard definition and you would need a whole different system if you wanted to get high definition TV. Also the antenna delivers the signal on only one coax so you cannot watch live TV on one channel while recording on another. But you can still watch prerecorded programs while recording a live broadcast.

We've used it this way for more than a week and have no problems and no desire to change anything. I will say that we had a strong wind last Friday and I "stowed" the rooftop dish antenna because it was getting buffeted about enough to cause some pixilation.

I'll try to answer any other questions you have about the operation of the Datron system. By the way, while Datron may still be active in the automation industry, the TV antenna business is gone.

FWIW

On edit: While I cannot test this, theoretically the Datron 3000 works with Dish/Echostar too. There are a couple of Echostar-compatible IRD's shown in the manual. I think "compatible" in the cases of both the DIRECTV and DISH IRD's is the feedback data loop cable that enables fully automatic satellite acquisition. The semi-automatic process I described above should work equally well for DISH satellites and DIRECTV's.

[Bill Adams]

Quote:

Originally Posted by pjtaxi We bought a used motorhome last year, in one of the storage bays there were electronic boxes for different systems. First was this Datron box witch was not hooked up, but the dish ant. is on the roof. Also there was a Direct Tv reciever, which is outdated compared to what we have in our home. It also has cabel and tripod. My question is could tlhe Datron that is mounted on the roof still be used, or should we try to take one of our house recievers from direct and hook up with tripod. The reason for asking is I can't see hauling this dish mounted on the roof if it is not useable. But worry about removing and roof leaks. Any info appreciated.

The Datron you describe will likely "work" with your DirecTV receiver but you will have to do the pointing with a bit of manual intervention. The unit was designed to work with the older DTV boxes which have a low speed data port. If that is the receiver that in currently installed you should be able to use that receiver to point the dish to the DirecTV 101 satellite and then, using an A/B switch select your current receiver and watch all of the DirecTV standard definition programming. Another option would be to eliminate the old receiver, install yours and then using the signal meter on that receiver, wait until you see a good signal and quickly turn off the Datron controller so it stays pointed toward the 101.
That unit and every dome unit on the market can only receive the DirecTV SD programming so if you have a desire for the HD and SD programming you will have to replace the Datron with a Winegard or MotoSAT open face multi-LNB antenna.