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com 09-10/2014 TELE-audiovision International

Robust heavy duty positioner
Can drive the largest dishes
Fully DiSEqC-1.2 compatibility for use
with modern receivers
Can be used as a stand-alone device to
move the dish
Confgurable through a PC
Titanium
ASC1
TEST REPORT Positioner for Big Satellite Dish
09-10/2014
www.TELE-audiovision.com/14/09/titanium
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TEST REPORT Positioner for Big Satellite Dish
The Best Way to Move your
Big Dish to any Position
The Titanium ASC1 is a
true heavy-duty dish po-
sitioner. Its appearance is
very impressive; much dif-
ferent from those common
positioners that come in
small plastic boxes. It actu-
ally looks like it was built for
military use: heavy, mas-
sive and robust; any satellite
enthusiasts heart will jump
just looking at it - at least
our hearts went into over-
drive!
The internal components
are protected by two heavy
steel plates with the product
name Titanium engraved on
the top. These plates have
a hole on each side large
enough for your hands that
lets you easily carry the Ti-
tanium ASC1. You can even
take the positioner right up
to the dish when setting it
up (i.e. to defne the limits
of the actuator). The over-
all design looks great and is
very practical.
The Titaniums case is
painted in a matt black color
and the front features an
unusually large LCD display
capable of displaying 4 lines
with 20 characters each
more than enough to com-
pletely control every func-
tion. To the left side of the
display are the buttons that
let you navigation within
the menu structure as well
as two big buttons to drive
the dish east and west. The
front panel also contains the
IR-receiver for the remote
control. Spoiler alert: you do
not need to read the manual
Titanium ASC1 Positioner
Best positioner on the market and a real
bargain in terms of versatility, functionality
and sheer construction quality
to use the Titanium ASC1; it
is really easy to use.
On the back panel youll
fnd the typical connectors
for one actuator and the
skew control as well as a
power socket (you can plug
in a regular grounded power
cable no external power
adapter is needed) and an
RS-232 port with a DB9 con-
nector. There are two LNB
jacks to connect the LNB and
the receiver if you want to
control the Titanium ASC1
through DiSEqC 1.2. The in-
cluded remote control is a
simple, yet comfortable, de-
sign that lets you fully con-
trol the Titanium ASC1.
Finally, there is a fuse
compartment in the unlikely
event of a short circuit or a
power spike. We appreciated
this extra level of protection;
unfortunately, accidents do
happen no matter how care-
ful you try to be...
At frst the size of this po-
sitioner caught us by sur-
prise. Well, it turns out its
not just for show. Just like
1
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with premium audio amplif-
ers, which are similar in size,
it is big for a reason: theres
a huge power transformer
inside the chassis. Large
transformers like that gen-
erally need to be protected
and cooled, but since a fan
can be the source of really
annoying noise, the Titanium
ASC1 was constructed with
two steel plates with air in-
lets on the side to keep eve-
rything cool.
So why does the Tita-
nium ASC1 need such a
large transformer inside in
the frst place? Because in
this way it can drive actua-
tors that draw as much as 5
1. Unzipping the archive shows the two fles: the binary fle for the
frmware and a text fle explaining the frmware changes
2. The new frmware has been successfully loaded into the Titanium
ASC1
Amps. Take the largest polar
mount you can fnd, install
it on the biggest dish you
can buy and the Titanium
ASC1 can drive it without
any effort. Other position-
ers provide much less power
and therefore would have a
much harder time trying to
move heavy dishes.
Another unique aspect of
the Titanium ASC1 is the
fact that it can work as a
standalone device. It easily
replaces older generation
receivers that have an inte-
Firmware
Upgrade
Before we tried out the
Titanium ASC1 in the feld
we checked the Titanium
website (www.titaniumsat-
ellite.com) and downloaded
its latest frmware. In fact,
Titanium does invest a lot of
resources improving every
detail of the Titanium ASC1 and as a result, the
user can beneft from frequent frmware upgrades.
The upgrade process is very simple: just down-
load the ZIP archive containing the binary fle.
Laudable: a text fle is included which lists all
changes of the frmware. After unzipping the frm-
ware binary fle (*.bin extension), we just had to
use the included Titanium Loader/Editor software
and select the Firmware Upgrade function. We
were asked to select the frmware fle and to press
a button to start the process, which took less than
one minute. We appreciated the fact that the soft-
ware confrmed that the frmware has in fact been
fashed correctly: it is always nice to get that kind
of feedback.
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Editor Software
The Titanium Loader/Editor soft-
ware which we used to upgrade the
frmware can be used to edit and cus-
tomize the Titanium ASC1s satellite
confguration. It wouldnt make sense
to try to edit satellite names on the
Titanium itself, at least it would not
be a comfortable thing to do.
Using the PC is much better and
quicker, especially because the Tita-
nium website offers complete satel-
lite lists for different regions. These
lists are *.CSV fles, which can be
edited using Excel. This means that
you could, for example, get your de-
sired satellite list from your favorite
listings website and adjust it to the
required format using Excel.
The format is simple; it contains
just four columns: the name of the
satellite with up to 14 characters, the
position (number of actuator impuls-
es), the horizontal skew and the ver-
tical skew (both as an angle).
We enjoyed this widely open format
and noticed that the Titanium Load-
er/Editor software is very straight
forward to use, too. You can down-
load the satellite confguration from
the Titanium ASC1 or upload to it.
These processes take about a minute
and it feels very reassuring to have a
backup of the satellite confguration
on a PC.
This allows maintaining multiple
profles in case you really need more
than 99 satellite confgurations (or
200 satellite confgurations with the
soon to be released new frmware).
You could have a Ku-band profle
and a C-band profle and swap it as
needed.
3. Excel could be used to edit this
satellite list for the Titanium ASC1
4. Another option is to edit the satellite
list with the Titanium Loader/Editor
software
grated 36V actuator control.
There are many enthusi-
asts out there that still use
these older receivers just to
move their dishes and use
modern receivers to watch
TV. These same enthusiasts
probably wouldnt want to
part with their modern re-
ceiver; instead they could
replace their old receiver/
positioner with this modern
version and keep everything
else just the same, especial-
ly since the modern receiver
may already be set up with
custom satellite settings and
thousands of channels.
However, the Titanium
ASC1 also supports DiS-
EqC-1.2. This would let you
hide the ASC1 out of view
and control everything via
DiSEqC 1.2 commands that
are supported by all of to-
days modern receivers.
Thanks to the big LCD dis-
play, the Titanium ASC1 can
be used without being con-
nected to any TV or receiv-
er. Of course, normally you
would usually do this only
during the initial setup, but
the ASC1 makes it extremely
convenient: once the actua-
tor is connected to the dish,
you would want to be able
to drive the dish from east
to west and back again to
check the mechanical instal-
lation. You would also want
to be able set the hardware
limits of the actuator and
normally you would want
to set the software limits
as well. The Titanium ASC1
makes it possible to do all of
this without having to con-
nect a receiver. This is re-
ally an outstanding feature!
If you ever have to correct
something on your dish, you
The Titanium ASC1 is very heavy, so what's inside? A huge
transformer that will drive the biggest dish thanks to its 5 amp
output. We also found exceptionally well designed PCBs with
professional cables. Everything is assembled with great care.
Thumbs up to Titanium for excellent workmanship!
5
6
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can simply carry the solidly-
built Titanium ASC1 out to
the dish by one of its han-
dles. Then connect to the
actuator and a power source
- youll then be able to drive
the dish to any stored posi-
tion, reset the limits, etc.
And you dont even have to
be right next to the Titanium
ASC1; just use the included
remote control. And yes, we
did try it: it works outside
under full sunlight.
In fact, to really check
out all of the capabilities of-
fered by the Titanium ASC1,
we paid a visit to one of the
best known satellite enthu-
siasts in Europe: Feedsat,
as he is known all over the
Internet forums and blogs.
Feedsat has quite a remark-
able garden in the South of
France: between perfectly
trimmed grass, a pond and
a swimming pool, you will
fnd two prime focus dishes,
one with a diameter of 3.1m
plus polar mount, the other
is currently 2.8m in diam-
eter (soon to be extended
to 3.2m and equipped with
a polar mount). Theres also
a 1.8m offset dish. All three
of these dishes are used for
the C-band, but the smaller
1.8m dish has a Ku-band
LNB as well.
Which of these dishes do
you think we selected for
testing the Titanium ASC1?
Of course we opted for Feed-
sats largest dish, the Wine-
gard 10 Pinnacle TVRO 3.1m
dish, made in the USA. This
is a really huge and heavy
dish; the polar mount is mas-
sive and the installed actua-
tor is hungry for power. In
fact, most regular position-
ers would have a hard time
driving this dish and would
enter an over-current state.
If you keep overdriving it,
you might end up destroying
the device.
Not so with the Titanium
ASC1. After connecting the
wires, which only required a
few minutes, we were able
to drive the dish back and
forth without any effort. The
movement of the actuator
was always smooth and con-
stant.
To further test the Tita-
nium ASC1 in actual use we
5. Heres where we
conducted our test of
the Titanium ASC1. This
is where Feedsat, a well
known satellite enthusiast,
has installed several large
dishes in the South of France.
On a side note: Feedsats
garden is the perfect example on
how to set up oversized dishes
without ruining the harmony. Note:
all cables run underground!
6. First we lined up our equipment:
a laptop, the Deviser S7000 meter,
the Titanium ASC1 and fnally the old
positioner that Feedsat has been using
up until now for one of his dishes.
The Titanium ASC1 menu
70 TELE-audiovision International The Worlds Leading Digital TV Industry Publication 09-10/2014 www.TELE-audiovision.com
connected one of our refer-
ence meters, the Deviser
S7000 (presented in TELE-
audiovision 09-10/2013,
you can read the test re-
port here: www.TELE-audi-
ovision.com/13/09/deviser).
This allowed us to see the re-
al-time spectrum and thanks
to the waterfall diagram we
could register and count all
of the satellites featuring C-
band transponders.
At frst we were using the
Titanium ASC1 directly to
drive the dish. Having the re-
mote control available made
it so convenient to operate
the dish that we almost for-
got that we could also con-
trol the dish with the Deviser
by using simple DiSEqC 1.2
commands. Once we real-
ized that we could do that,
we went ahead and tried it
out to make sure that all the
possible DiSEqC 1.2 com-
mands are really supported:
GOTO, STORE, STEP, LIMIT
and RESET.
While the GOTOxx com-
mand is fairly standard and
should have no trouble work-
ing on a positioner that is to
be connected to a modern
satellite receiver, we were
not so sure about how well
it would behave with the re-
maining commands.
The frst command we
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7. Connecting the wires: 2 thick ones (red and black)
for the motor, 2 thin ones (red and black as well) for
the sensor and the remaining 3 thin cables for the
servo motor of the LNB (skew).
8. The same applies to the positioner: here the cables
are, of course, connected in the same manner
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16
17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24
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Ready,
Set,
Go!
The Titanium ASC1 had no problem whatsoever
to turn the big 3.1m dish back and forth, from
limit to limit. Speaking of limits: there will almost
always be an obstacle limiting the movement of
the dish. While it is normal to set the hardware
limits on the actuator, which uses micro-
switches for this purpose, it can be useful and
add a level of security if the software limits of the
Titanium ASC1 are set as well.
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tested was the STEP com-
mand. This will move a mo-
torized dish exactly one step
to the east or to the west.
It is up to the receiver or,
like in our case, the meter,
to implement functions to
move more than one step at
a time. The Deviser S7000
allows the user to select how
many seconds or how many
steps are to be executed at a
given time.
The Titanium ASC1 inter-
9. To test the Titanium ASC1, we decided to set it up close to the
dish. Here the big LCD display of the Titanium paid off, since we
could set the limits and test the overall performance. The direct
sunlight did not disturb us: the Titaniums display was bright
enough.
10. Satellite enthusiast Feedsat uses the Titanium ASC1s
remote control to move the dish

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preted the STEP command
exactly as expected, trans-
posing the steps on the polar
mount. Interestingly, it did
so with a precision of +/- 1
step, which is as good as you
could imagine.
Next we tried the LIMIT
command. This is normally
used in DiSEqC 1.2 motors
to set the software limits
in order to prevent the dish
from hitting any obstacle
like a wall. Polar mounts nor-
mally come with hardware
limit settings based on an
actual switch, but this has to
be set up on the dish. Defn-
ing a software limit provides
an extra layer of security, a
temporary limit or simply re-
duces the installation time.
Traditional positioners do
not provide the LIMIT func-
tion defned by the DiSEqC
1.2 protocol, so we were
curious to see how the Ti-
tanium ASC1 would react if
we tried to set limits through
our Deviser S7000. And
sure enough, as soon as the
limit was set on the Deviser
S7000, the Titanium ASC1
would not move the polar
mount any further than the
limit.
When we tried the ERASE
LIMIT command on the De-
viser, we hit a little snag:
the Titanium ASC1 refused
to move beyond the previ-
ously defned limit. What
was going on? Very simple:
we should have looked at the
LCD screen on the Titanium
ASC1. Each time we tried
the ERASE LIMIT function,
the Titanium ASC1 was look-
ing for a confrmation to re-
ally delete the limit. This is
an excellent feature that will
prevent any accidentally de-
leted limits and the potential
costly consequences.
The RESET command did
not produce any effect on
the Titanium ASC1, which
is actually exactly what we
expected and wanted. This
command only makes sense
on an integrated DiSEqC 1.2
'Feedsat' uses the
Deviser S7000 to
fne-tune the dish
OPINION
EXPERT
+

RECOMMENDED
PRODUCT BY
Vitor Martins
Augusto
Test Center
Portugal
Titanium ASC1
Positioner for Big Satellite Dish
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Can provide 5A to drive the largest dishes
Can be used as a stand-alone positioner (no need for a satel-
lite receiver)
Full support of DiSEqC 1.2 commands
PC programmable through RS-232
None
motor and we defnitely dont
want to allow a satellite re-
ceiver to reset the settings
of a dedicated positioner.
Naturally, you can do a set-
tings reset on the Titanium
ASC1 itself by selecting the
corresponding menu option,
which then has to be con-
frmed.
Finally, we set up the Ti-
tanium ASC1 in the shack
where it replaced Feedsats
existing age-old Echostar
AD2500IP receiver. The Tita-
nium ASC1 was setup as an
stand-alone positioner with-
out taking advantage of the
DiSEqC 1.2 capabilities and
Feedsat could start satellite
surfng with the Titanium
ASC1 just like he did before
with his Echostar.
The Titanium ASC1 can
store up to 99 satellite con-
fgurations, storing for each
confguration the position
and the horizontal and ver-
tical skew rotation. You can
give each satellite confgu-
ration a name of up to 14
characters, which should be
more than enough.
However, for a hardcore
satellite enthusiast, 99 sat-
ellite confgurations may not
be quite enough when you
consider that in well served
locations such as in central
Europe you can receive an
amazing number of satellites
can use it for dishes both
small and large and it works
with any of your receivers.
Start with a small dish and
expand one by one to the
largest dish you can get and
the Titanium will be your po-
sitioner for all of them.
- at Feedsats location where
we performed our tests, 74
satellite positions from 76.0E
to 63.0W could be accessed
at the time of our test. With
a multi-feed confguration
using two LNBs (i.e. one Ku-
Band LNB in focus and one
C-Band on the side), you
now have 148 positions. So
we contacted Brian Gohl, the
owner of Titanium and devel-
oper of the positioner, and
he immediately responded
by promising to increase the
number of satellite positions
to 200 in the next frmware
update.
One of the biggest advan-
tages of the Titanium ASC1
is its the versatility. You can
drive any oversized dish and
you can use it as a stan-
dalone or transparent DiSE-
qC 1.2 positioner anything
is possible.
This is the defnitive posi-
tioner; you buy it only once
and it will last a lifetime. You
Interview with
Brian Gohl
Q (Feedsat): Why did you decide
to develop the Titanium ASC1 posi-
tioner considering that only satellite
enthusiasts would be interested in
such a device?
A (Brian Gohl): I have been a
satellite enthusiast for many years
and this has always infuenced the
equipment that I design and distrib-
ute. What would make my personal
satellite system better? What is avail-
able on the market? How can I build
something better?
The ASC1 was developed for sev-
eral reasons. I use and test many
different DVB-S/S2 receivers and
as a satellite DXer and enthusiast,
I wanted the best performance pro-
vided by a servo adjustable skew. I
disliked using a separate analog or
4DTV IRD or a manual controller to
position the dish and set the polar-
ity and skew offset every time that
I changed to another satellite or
transponder. Forget about automatic
multi-satellite scanning. I had to be
present to change the polarity just
at the right time or perform each
satellite and polarity scan manually!
Multiple timers had to be coordinated
to record. The analog receiver timer
would move the dish and select the
polarity, then the DVB-S/S2 STB tim-
er would record the show. I cant be-
gin to tell you how many recordings
were missed because of timer coor-
dination issues. Most importantly, my
wife didnt like using the satellite sys-
tem because after she changed the
channel on the DVB-S/S2 settop box,
she would have to read from a piece
of paper taped beside the TV to know
what satellite to select on the old leg-
acy analog IRD and what transponder
to provide the correct polarity. This
had to be repeated almost anytime
the channel was changed! Needless
to say, everyone in the house was
scared of using the big satellite dish
because they might mess something
up. They just wanted to change chan-
nels and watch TV.
The ASC1 allows any DiSEqC 1.2
receiver to automatically control the
satellite dish and LNB polarity. Now
anyone in the house simply changes
channels and watches TV. Now I can
optimize the dish position and skew
offset for each satellite and polar-
ity, perform unattended satellite and
multi-satellite blind scans and best of
all, my DVR recordings happen auto-
matically.
Q: Why did you choose an RS232
interface instead of a popular USB in-
terface considering that most of the
new generation of computers dont
have a serial port? Naturally you
could use a USB to RS232 adapter,
but still I wonder what the reason
was.
A: I selected the RS232 type serial
protocol for the ASC1 as it is much
more robust and is a proven commu-
nication method for recovery, frm-
ware and user database updates/
transfers. You will note that the ma-
jority of satellite receivers still in-
clude RS232 ports for recovery and
updating. Many of us have learned
through experience that USB up-
dating can be defeated, rendering a
product useless. Since the ASC1 is a
new product and interface, I wanted
to be sure that we could update and
recover in any situation. I have now
arranged with the factory to include
a USB to RS232 converter for users
who do not have or wish to add this
port on their computer.
Q: Are you thinking about an ASC2
with dual axis motor control?
A: We have prototyped a dual axis
model and are determining if this
would be best marketed as a sidecar
(possible upgrade) or to introduce
it as a separate model. The current
design is made up of components
that could be easily reconfgured or
swapped as necessary. The dual axis
market is an extremely small seg-
ment, so we are frst evaluating the
sales of the ASC1 into the consumer
marketplace, then we may venture
into additional controller products
and markets.
Q: The ASC1 can store 99 posi-
tions, which might be little tight for
extreme users. Are there any plans
to increase the number of positions?
A: In the near future, the ASC1
will support 200 positions. This is
the main reason that we reduced the
Satellite Name feld to 14 characters,
to make sure that we have adequate
memory for the additional satellite
positions. 200-position support has
been successful in beta frmware
testing, but we will add a few more
features before launching this major
upgrade.

Q: What are the future plans?
A: We will also be adding DiSEqC
1.1 control via user set menu selec-
tion. DiSEqC 1.1 option will allow
commercial units (without DiSEqC
1.2 support) to work with the ASC1.
We are working with several coders
to develop external control via PC/
Linux/Raspberry.
Brian Gohl,
Owner of Titanium Satellite
and Developer of the
Titanium ASC1 Positioner
Interview by Feedsat