Communal Dish and UPC - Figuring out the points!!

JHet

Hi,

I recently moved into a new apartment which has a communal Dish system on the roof and UPC. Each apartment has two tv points one in the main bedroom and one in the living room. These are two way UPC style with FM and TV f connectors. The points can be switched between upc and the dish based on the occupants preference. The plant room is open that contains all the wiring to switch these over however its a bit of a maze.
So far I've been able to locate an 8 way multiswitch very similar to the below.



Presumably this can be chained with more multiswitchs if required. It has 4 wires going into it with the Vertical and horizontal high and low.
Now the problem is:
- 5 boxes attached to the wall
- each box has 8 points
So thats a total of 40 connections all together. Presumably this is all wiring to the UPC points which my apt is hooked up to currently. I think the majority of apt's are setup this way. Only a few have been taken out and connected to the multiswitch.
Whats the best way to determine what points are for my apartment? There are no markings that tell you what apartments they are hooked up to, or at least no logical ones anyway.
The block I live on has 4 floors including ground and 3 apts on each floor, a total of 12.There are 3 other blocks of apartments adjacent but I'm speculating that they would have there own plant rooms and are not related to mine.
Any help much appreciated.

Thanks

steveon

Nothing worse when the aparments arent marked, two ways one is if u have the chorus picture working in your apartment then you will need to pull out each cable one by one until the picture goes off to identify the cable or if you can get your hands on a cablke toner then it will allow you to idenify the cable by sending a voltage spike down the cable which will to0ne once you disconnect the right cable.

You can now get ones that will idenitfy a bunch of cables at once which are great heres a link onm amazon for such a tool

http://www.amazon.com/Triplett-3274-WireMaster-Coaxial-Mapper/dp/B000F7TACW/ref=acc_glance_hi_ai_ps_t_5

kbell

The willows apts??

JHet

Thanks lads. I actually managed to get it sorted myself. Have my skybox working now after some considerable hassle!! woohoo.

Steveon I basically used the first method you suggested! I had my housemate ring me from upstairs. Then it was just a matter of methodically disconnecting and reconnecting each cable until we lost signal. I then simply used a small length of patch cable and an F joiner to connect it to the multiswitch. When I went back up to the apartment I had to take the UPC box off the wall and remove the upc filter (an isolator i believe). I then hooked it up to the box and everything worked perfectly!

It was pretty simple really, just a little tedious seen as nobody bothered to mark anything when it was installed initially. :rolleyes: Big bonus was I saved myself a callout fee from sky!

I'm guessing you can't just split the signal at the satellite end for Sky+? You'd need to run another cable right?....from the multiswitch which with the current setup is not possible.

Thanks

steveon

Nice1 mate well done on getting it sorted, Im amazed the management crew left u in the comm's room.

Anyway to ur second question, you mite be able to use a Stacker/destacker which will enable you to connect two cables from the multiswitch to the stacker and then u will get 2 cables out from the destacker which u fit in your appartment.

It really is down to the lenght of cable from your appartment to the comms room that is the deciding factor.

Here some details of one
http://www.atcsupplies.com/ProductDetails.aspx?Mode=ViewDetails&ProductCode=2JKOIF&pID=113

There are a few different available get the one with the longest range in lenght for better chance of it working...best of luck..

JHet

Cheers Steve. That certainly is a great solution. The cost of the thing is the main disadvantage I would see but it certainly is a handy little device alright!

kbell

JHet wrote: »

Cheers Steve. That certainly is a great solution. The cost of the thing is the main disadvantage I would see but it certainly is a handy little device alright!

You could route a cable from the bedroom feed round to the living room.
If done neatly, it'll work no problems.

JHet

Thanks Kbell, you're right, with proper cable covers and neat drilling and so on it could be done very easily. Unfornunately I have a box in the bedroom aswell so need that outlet. To be honest I was just delighted that I got it working in the first place! I thought my hopes of getting satellite were gone and I simply refused to pay for the quite frankly rubbish UPC!