Guide to Creating a Technomate Channel List from Scratch

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I decided to post this due to the recent increase in posts about Scanning Satellite channels on Technomate Receivers and the obvious problems that can occur when Blind Scanning the full satellite ARC which is not a Good idea as you will almost certainly end up with duplicate Channels/Transponders which is not what you want in the first place.

Ok then first off the spreadsheet program that does all the hard work for you was created by jetsetw from Digital Worldz forum so all Credit for this work including Guides on how to use it belong solely to him.

Please read all the Guides enclosed written by the author of the program and you must have microsoft Excel for this spreadsheet to work.

Guide to Creating a Technomate Channel List from Scratch

For Technomate 5400 Super and 5402HD models with USALS. (May work with other series.)

Note: this guide and the attached spreadsheet are for creating a brand new channel list.
They will not help you modify an existing channel list.

Warning: always back up your own channel list before loading another one!

Many channel lists are available online, but the best list is always the one you make yourself.
This "Transponder Updater" spreadsheet will grab transponder details from the website of your
choice (Lyngsat, King of Sat, Flysat), for the satellites and beams you would like to scan. It then
saves an "empty" channel list to your PC with satellite and transponder information. (No channels
are stored at this stage.) This empty list can then be loaded into your receiver via USB stick, and
is ready for auto navigation to pull in the channels.

Features:

* You can enter your own satellite names and positions (up to 64).
* Choice of Lyngsat, King of Sat, or Flysat for acquiring transponders.
* You can specify exactly which beams from which to take transponders.
* Each website has its own columns for URLs and beams to scan, so you can switch from one to
another easily and compare results.
* Some good beams for the UK are already entered in the spreadsheet - easy to customise.
* A dummy transponder can be inserted for each satellite to prevent the Technomate from
scanning too early when auto-navigating. This ensures the dish has moved away from the
previous satellite before scanning the next one, thus preventing incorrect channel info on the
first transponder.
* After the spreadsheet has finished (could take a minute or two) you can see exactly which
transponders have been saved to the new list.

Full instructions in spreadsheet. Tested on Technomate 5400 Super and 5402 HD receivers.

Jetset

Couple of tips on using the spreadsheet:

1) If you want to see what the various beams are called from a particular satellite, an easier way than
visiting the Lyngsat/KoS/Flysat website is to type "all" in the beams column. After running the macro,
you'll see precisely what all beams are called; the names are often a very good indication of whether
they're worth including! For the less obvious beams, see Lyngsat and Flysat for links to footprints.

2) If you do insert the dummy TPs (*), they can be removed later using Clark Tech Editor Studio.
The latest version is 3.17, and it is great for tidying up channel lists generally. Although it claims
lists from the 5402HD are "5000-HDS format", I don't believe this is quite the case, and would save
them as "Clark Tech Plus" format for both 5400 Super and 5402HD receivers.

Jetset

Guide to Creating a Technomate Channel List from Scratch

For Technomate 5400 Super and 5402HD models with USALS.
(May work with other TM series, or with Clarke Tech clones.)

Note: this guide and the attached spreadsheet are for creating a brand new channel list.
They will not help you modify an existing channel list.

Warning: always back up your own channel list before loading another one!

Many channel lists are available online, but the best list is always the one you make yourself.
This "Transponder Updater" spreadsheet will grab transponder details from the website of your
choice (Lyngsat, King of Sat, Flysat), for the satellites and beams you would like to scan. It then
saves an "empty" channel list to your PC with satellite and transponder information. (No channels
are stored at this stage.) This empty list can then be loaded into your receiver via USB stick, and
is ready for auto navigation to pull in the channels.

Features:

* You can enter your own satellite names and positions (up to 64).
* Choice of Lyngsat, King of Sat, or Flysat for acquiring transponders.
* You can specify exactly the beams from which to take transponders.
* Each website has its own columns for URLs and beams to scan, so you can switch from one to
another easily and compare results.
* Some good beams for the UK are already entered in the spreadsheet - easy to customise.
* A dummy transponder can be inserted for each satellite to prevent the Technomate from
scanning too early when auto-navigating. This ensures the dish has moved away from the
previous satellite before scanning the next one, thus preventing incorrect channel info on the
first transponder.
* After the spreadsheet has finished (could take a minute or two) you can see exactly which
transponders have been saved to the new list.

Full instructions in spreadsheet. Tested on Technomate 5400 Super and 5402 HD receivers.
If the attached "rar" file does not open, try changing extension to "zip".

A couple of tips on using the spreadsheet:

1) If you want to see what the various beams are called from a particular satellite, an easier way than
visiting the Lyngsat/KoS/Flysat website is to type "all" in the beams column. After running the macro,
you'll see precisely what all beams are called; the names are often a very good indication of whether
they're worth including! For the less obvious beams, see Lyngsat and Flysat for links to footprints.

2) If you do insert the dummy TPs (*), they can be removed later using Clark Tech Editor Studio.
The latest version is 3.17, and it is great for tidying up channel lists generally. Although it claims
lists from the 5402HD are "5000-HDS format", I don't believe this is quite the case, and would save
them as "Clark Tech Plus" format for both 5400 Super and 5402HD receivers.

* recommended - before I added this option, my receiver would start scanning Astra 19 again while
the dish was on the move between 19E and 23.5E...

Best wishes for 2012,
Jetset

I'll talk you through an example. Suppose you want 30W and 4W in addition to the ones I've selected, but don't want 4.8E.

1) Choose "Lyngsat" from the website options box.

2) Click on the "Satellites" tab.

3) Type "yes" in cell D6. This means that Hispasat (30W) will be used.
The Lyngsat beams go in cell G6 for this satellite, but you don't need to type in anything here as I've already entered *Europe*,
which is the name Lyngsat uses for the European beams. Note that the * signs are needed around the beam names.

4) Type "yes" in cell D17. This means that Amos (4W) will be used.

5) Notice that cell G17 is blank. This is because I don't know which beams are any good on this satellite - my dish is too small.
You'll need to type something in cell G17. You could type "All" to get every single beam available, or you could look up the
beam names on Lyngsat and type the ones you want e.g. *Europe*Europe V* will pick up the "Europe" and "Europe V" beams,
while ignoring everything else, such as "Middle East" which is almost certainly impossible to get in the UK.
(Look at this webpage to see where the beam names are found: Amos 2/3 at 4.0?W - LyngSat)

6) Type "no" in cell D20. This means that the Astra 4A (4.8E) satellite will not be looked up later when the macro is run.
The beam names in cell G20 are now irrelevant and will be ignored, because you've said "no" to this satellite.

7) Go back to the "Options and Instructions" tab and click the Go! button to run the macro.

If at a later stage you want to get transponders that are used for feeds as well, you'll need to type "yes" in column F next to the
relevant satellites, and re-run the macro.

If you want a satellite that is not mentioned in my spreadsheet, you can simply type in the name, position etc. underneath in a
spare row. I would reorder the rows afterwards so that the satellites are in order across the arc for convenience.

Does this make a bit more sense?

Jetset

Just to add i have personally tested the output TP.ndf file on a TM5402HD, Blade 7000 & DR.HD F15