Dexatek software

Installing the Dexatek software

Basically, you follow the instructions in the box.

[Instructions for checking that the USB 2.0 is set to use hi-speed drivers should be here - see the PDF manual on the disk. Unlikely to be relevant to a modern PC running Vista.]

Connect the powered-up USB box to your PC. Please make a note of which USB port you used, and be sure to use that same port every time. Otherwise the PC may think that you are plugging in multiple items, and not be able to associate your hardware with the correct software!

You will get a warning dialog about a new device being discovered. Press the Cancel button. At several places throughout this guide you will find screenshots from both Windows Vista and Windows XP systems, to help you whichever OS you are using.

Windows Vista	Windows XP

Next, obtain your installation file. There is one on the supplied CD, or you can download the latest software here. At the time of writing, the latest drivers and application software for Windows Vista were the "DK5702 - 20071107 update Vista Driver and updated application pack" files. This is actually a RAR format file, and requires the UNRAR utility to unpack it. Use a command such as:

  unrar x *.rar

to expand the downloaded files into a set suitable for installation. This should result in a directory V2.0build02_20071102 Dexatek containing a number of files and directories, including the all-important setup.exe.

If the Dexatek drivers are off-line, you can also use the DVBWorld drivers with the Dexatek hardware. Go to the DVBWorld download page, find the DVBWorld Software and Drivers section, and download the "DVBWorld Software" (big remote control). This should provide a file DVBWorld-V2.0.rar which you can expand as described above. Look for the DVB World directory, and locate the setup.exe file. These files also work on the 64-bit version of Vista.

Double-click on setup.exe to start the install process. On Windows Vista, you may be prompted to authorise the program to continue, unless you have disabled the User Authorisation Control (UAC) in Vista:

UAC dialog

Follow all the steps in the Wizard. Please note that not all the screens you will see appear in the following section. First, choose your language:

After allowing the installation to proceed, ensure that both Drivers and Software are checked:

At two points in this process, you will get a warning that the drivers are unsigned. The dialog looks a little different on Windows Vista compared to Windows XP. Click on the "Install this driver software anyway" box or "Continue anyway" button:

On Windows XP, I suggest the default installation location. Note that in the system I used for testing Program Files happens to be on drive E:, as you can see in the screen-shot below. On my Vista system I actually installed to C:\Tool\Dexatek\

You will be prompted to install older versions of the Windows Media Player and Direct-X. Have both checked and press Next. Those components won't be installed if your PC doesn't need updates.

If all has gone well, you should get a successful installation:

Now reboot the computer. The manual notes: "If you are using a USB2.0 adapter PCI card/PCMCIA etc. to support the USB2.0, please turn off the USB Box power before you restart the computer. Please restart your computer directly if USB2.0 supported by motherboard." If required, power-up the USB box once the computer has started. You may see messages about new hardware found, installing drivers, and the device being ready for use. I'm not sure whether I saw that on my system, though!

Setting up the Dexatek software

For TV operation - do this first

The next steps are to select the satellite and transponder we want to connect to, and to configure the data connection for EUMETCast use.

Double-click the Dexatek icon on your Desktop to start the software:

Dexatek screenshot

Note the spanner-shaped configuration icon on the bottom row. Click it, and use the drop down lists to select the satellite as HotBird 1/2/3/4/5/6/7A, and the transponder as TP8_10853_H_27500:

If you have a more complex LNB setup, you may also need to configure the DiSEqC parameters, but for my simple setup Universal LNB was all I needed to select. For our application, there is no need to scan the whole satellite (Scan Sat). Press the "Scan TP" button to scan the selected transponder for the active TV and radio channels. After scanning a transponder, you are presented with a choice of what to make available. Select All, FTA (Free-To-Air).

You should be able to select and view TV channels by double-clicking after doing this, but beware of the possibly high volume level and the "adult" content of many of the channels on the 10853MHz transponder!

Setup for data operation - do this after the TV setup

Click on the configuration icon again to select the configuration dialog, but this time select the IP Config tab. There are a number of steps to setting up the data operation.

In the Transponder information box, select the 10853 (MHz) transponder.
Click on the "Transfer button" so that the transponder appears in the right-hand list as shown above.
Click on the TP1 transponder in the right-hand list.
In the PID information box, press the Scan PID button.
I have found that you might need to add PID by hand before the Scan PID button is enabled. So Click the Add button, click on Decimalization (sic.), enter 100 in the top PID Data box, and press OK.
If the PIDs show in hex, and you prefer decimal, follow the previous step to add PID 100. You can use the Windows Calculator in "Scientific View" to convert from Decimal to Hex and vice-versa.

Now press Scan PID. This is easier than entering all the PIDs you need by hand.
Select the PIDs you don't want, and press Delete for each PID. There is a list of PIDs here.
Be aware that if the data from a particular PID is not flowing when you do the Scan PID, the PID for that data may not get recorded automatically. Be sure to check the list carefully. If you miss a PID associated with data you are allowed to receive, you may get an intermittent red T icon - Check the list of PIDs carefully to avoid this (e.g. PID 302 for DWDSAT data).
Press the OK button to close the Configuration dialog.

To start the data flowing, you can press the IP button.

Final tweaks

Be sure to leave the TV software with a 24-hour working channel selected, otherwise when you first start in the morning the signal strength amy show as zero, and no data will flow when you press the IP button.

My thanks to Ian Deans for his valuable suggestions for improving this page after testing it out on his own installation.