we made a charger for Kate's ds.

universal charger, about 4.5V. a ds plug from a different usb universal charger which didn't work. some wires and sellotape.

Kate and I tried plugging in the different combinations. we're quite pleased we found one which works. too much or too little voltage doesn't work.

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Move from 4 channel land to ~20+ channel land.

We're pretty good at keeping away from the TV generally.
However there is very interesting stuff on on occasion.
And it's so nice to veg out in front of it sometimes.


And, anyway, tuning in satellites and aligning dishes is kind of interesting and fun. 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astra_(satellites)
Lots of people on satellite forums are all excited at the moment about a new satellite parking up in the Astra1 location. http://www.ses.com/4232618/fleet-coverage 

We've had the 4 Irish channels (RTE1 RTE2 TV3 TG4(TelefisnaGaeilge)) for a good bit now.

We had BBC channels on satellite only the satellite box died.

We're not really scared of Gay Byrne's adds telling people analog transmission is going to be turned off. In fact because Gaybo is telling people to change I would be inclined to rebel in the laziest way possible and not do anything. However Fionnuala is organised and looking after our digital TV future.

New TV for us and new Digital Terrestrial tuner + Satellite tuner box (so we can plug into HDD and record channels on occasion). Digital Terrestrial channels give us same 4 RTE channels plus a couple (e3, RTENews). Satellite gives us lots of BBC channels and ITV and verious mixed others. (Freeview).

So now we are all set up with SaorView (RTE's digital TV) and ready for analog transmission to go away.

Aligning the dish was a little bit tricky. This worked for me: 

1. align roughly (look at other dishes orientation, use http://www.dishpointer.com/ also and align using landmarks and compass)

2.fail Trying to tune in using power signals on the satellite box didn't seem to make any difference. In fact unplugging the cable sometimes caused a little bit more in the signal intensity bars. Which was slightly offputting. Thankfully it turns out we don't have any problem with cabling from dish through house to TV.

3.fail align using GPS on phone, ... tricky, GPS on phone takes a good while to lock and not easy to use it as a pointer.

4.success set TV on to pre-tuned channel, turn volume up, set up home phones on speaker call: one by TV, bring other out to dishwith you. Move dish until you hear it tune in. 

We got a Xoro receiver from http://www.tvtrade.ie

Am impressed with them, good to order online from and great help notes and videos on their website for tuning and dish alignment.
http://www.tvtrade.ie/sky-satellilte-dish-and-lnb.html

I got the good tip on using pre-tuned channels for dish aligning from this from tvtrade: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tO1Xi...layer_embedded

The end alignment seems a bit more North and more vertical than expected.

Now back out onto roof one last time to clear gunk out of rain gutters.

:)