Sky Magic Eye Remote Problem

bigbadcon

Hi folks,

Im looking for some advice on how to get my Sky magic eye to work in another room upstairs.

My electrical knowledge is limited to what I found on youtube yesterday so bear with me.. :-)

So what im ultimately trying to do is use a magic eye to view my sky box in an upstairs bedroom from the sky box down stairs.

The house is quite new and I have coax points in nearly every room so I thought instead of running nasty looking cables upstairs I would use the existing coax points.

So I was messing about with it yesterday and I actully got the signal to the upstairs television. Its perfect quality too which is a bonus. However the remote does not register with the magic eye at all and I think I know why but I want clarification before I go breaking stuff.

So my set up is as follows.

Sky box is downstairs
-->
Its RF output goes to the coax point in the wall beside the TV
-->
This then goes up to the attic
-->
In the attic I have the coax cable from the point beside the TV joined with a double sided female F connector to the other coax point ( which is in the upstairs bedroom) I learned this bit on youtube :-)


So with the following set up I can get the signal to the box upstairs but the remote is not registering.

Im wondering is the likely reason the remote isnt working is because of the transistors in the coax points that are stopping the signal?

If so is it an option to do the same join (with the double sided female connector) both downstairs and upstairs and completely bypass the coax point altogether.

This way it will be like one big cable wont it?

Will the female connectors stop the remote signal getting through?

I dont want to go breaking my coax point unneccessarily as I dont know how to put them back together :-)

Thanks for your help in advance

Regards

bigbadcon

indie armada

firstly did you switch on the 9 volt supply on the skybox menu. there are a few rf outputs on the back of the skybox and one is marked 9 volts. usually you have to go into the settings menu to switch the 9 volts on.
also ideally you should have one solid piece of cable with isolated joints where joints occur. using the female and male f type connectors are fine but make sure the braid on the coax is not touching the centre core as this will cause a short because the skybox sends the power for the tele eye up the coax using the braid as a negative and the centre core as the positive so these cant touch. you should run the cable right trough bypassing the tv points, or better yet take them off the wall and replace them with blank plates and where the cable comes out at the tv just drill a hole in the blank plate to allow the cable to come out of the wall neatly.

ps.....the output with the 9 volts is a male rf connection so you will need a barrel type straight trough to connect to it or a lead with a female connection on it.

bigbadcon

Hi indie,

Thanks for your help.

I definitely didnt check anything with regards the 9 volt so thats the first thing Il look at when when I get home.

I was quite careful making the F connectors and I dont think any of the braid is touching the copper. Would I still get a good picture if there was an issue with the connections I made?

With regards the rf output connector I got a female connector with the Magic eye pack and I cut the end off a coax cable and put the connector on the rf output on the sky box.

So you reckon the combination of 3 double sided female connectors and removing the coax points will do the trick?

Female connectors:
1 at my downstairs TV
1 up in the attic joining the 2 cables
1 at my upstairs TV


Appreciate the help.

indie armada

with regard to the signal, if the braid was touching the centre core you would still get a decent signal,but if there was a cross short and you removed it you would see a differance in the picture quallity.

so from the back of the skybox on the output marked 9v using a female rf type connection to the cable goin to the first joint at the tv point then to the attic to your second joint then down to the point in the bedroom to your third joint which will end with an rf to go into the tele eye which then gets plugged into the tv. when you activate the remote at the tele eye upstairs they usually flash a little red led to show you its receiving the ir signal from the remote

bigbadcon

Brilliant. Il give that a shot soon and report back.

Thanks again for your help.

Homer

It's RF out 2 that sends the 9v signal and not RF1 just so you know!

Brando_ie

Don't know if this will help but I tried all sorts of things when setting up my magic eye to get remote to read (I established picture fairly early on and had the RF power thing sorted) but despite many many efforts at having the neatest coax connections possible I was only able to finally get it to work by bypassing all the face plates and connecting the cable manually (I gave it a shot based on a neat and sturdy insulation tape covered connection I opened up that had been done by the sky installer originally)

Once I bypassed the face plates the things worked just dandy. Might be a help if you too cannot get the plates / connectors to play ball?

I understand it is also distance related and I improved everything by slicing off a load of excess that was balled up in the attic to reduce the actual distance the signal travels.

indie armada

like brando says the least ammount of connections the better and i would usually remove the guts from the tv point leaving the little hole for the cable to come out trough the hole. the coax used in the house is probably airspaced coax which isnt the best for satelite and digital and the least ammount of cable used from point to point the better.