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Joey loses connection with Hopper

64132 Views 19 Replies 11 Participants Last post by  clay409
I just had the Hopper/Joey system installed last week. 2 Hoppers and 4 Joeys.
One of the Joeys loses it's connection with it's Hopper every night. I have to unplug them both for them to eventually reconnect with each other. What could be causing this. It only happens with the one Joey and not the others. It is a real pain in the neck. Any suggestions?
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Sounds like it may be a bad Joey, has problems with the nightly download. Try to swap it with a Joey that works correctly, if it does the same thing we will have eliminated wiring as a possibility.
I actually am doing that today. I'll wait till tomorrow and see what happens. If it is a bad Joey I wonder if Dishnetwork will replace it?
jbones said:
I actually am doing that today. I'll wait till tomorrow and see what happens. If it is a bad Joey I wonder if Dishnetwork will replace it?
of course they will
Swapped out with another Joey from a different room and is still doing the same thing. This is the only Joey connected to this Hopper. Could it be the Hopper? Just stays on looking for Hopper. and doesn't connect.
Could be the Hopper, or the node, but it's probably a problem with the cable, tap, or splitter. Sounds like you need a tech, time to call Dish.
Make sure all the cable connectors are all good compression connectors. Connections not just finger tight us a wrench and snug them. Its being discovered that even a slightly loose connection will cause issues.
I had the same problem and when I reset my router back to the factory settings, all was well....
I have same problem with two Joeys. Sometimes at night one of them will lose its link to Hopper. It seems completely random which one does it.
tommiet said:
I had the same problem and when I reset my router back to the factory settings, all was well....
What do you mean by router?
davejacobson said:
Make sure all the cable connectors are all good compression connectors. Connections not just finger tight us a wrench and snug them. Its being discovered that even a slightly loose connection will cause issues.
Don't use a wrench !

Use your fingers only or you'll end up with replacing not just a connector but other parts [barrel, switch] too.
Did you install the Joey from the other room at the location where you are having the problem with the Joey (Joey from different doing the same thing as the Joey in question) or did you take the Joey in question, installed it at the location where a Joey was working, and the Joey in question is still having problems? Please let me know. Thanks.

jbones said:
Swapped out with another Joey from a different room and is still doing the same thing. This is the only Joey connected to this Hopper. Could it be the Hopper? Just stays on looking for Hopper. and doesn't connect.
Do you connecting your Hopper/Joey to an internet ROUTER? I reset my router and my Joey has not had a problem in over a month. Would lose my connection daily before.
Finger tight is not tight enough. The connectors will loosen over time.A gentle touch with a small 7/16 wrench is all you need.When I say gentle I mean GENTLE.I guess alot of people might not know what that is and twist till it breaks. Just an ever so slight bump is all you need. 20yrs and I have not twisted one off yet but I have seen people that have. Did I say gentle touch yet?
Yes, that's why it is not recommended in public. Don't push on it. :)
davejacobson said:
Finger tight is not tight enough. The connectors will loosen over time.A gentle touch with a small 7/16 wrench is all you need.When I say gentle I mean GENTLE.I guess alot of people might not know what that is and twist till it breaks. Just an ever so slight bump is all you need. 20yrs and I have not twisted one off yet but I have seen people that have. Did I say gentle touch yet?
Yes, and put a bit of heat with a touch of solder on the mating threads while you're at it:D
I do this too Dave, but only when I suspect that someone will tamper with my work. Everything gets 30 inch pounds except indoor equipment connections.
I have the same problem but it is with all four of my Joeys. Basically the Joeys will initially connect and may work for 10 minutes to 2 hours before disconnecting and showing the "Joey is looking for a hopper 1303 message." Prior to this happening the MOCA indicator is 4 green bars on the Joey and the Hopper. When the problem happens the Joey will either "lock-up" like a youtube video that is buffering allowing only a few seconds of video every 10-20 seconds or it will disconnect and when it "reconnects" you can only watch what is currently playing on the Hopper. What is even more interesting is that the "diagnostic" screen will show it with full MOCA bars and connected to the Hopper, but the "whole home" screen shows it unlinked.

Anyway, I had a service call where the tech spent 2 hours trying to fix the problem. He replaced the duo-node, splitters, terminations, etc and then was very honest with me. He said "I just have no clue what is going on here. This makes no sense, you are going to need another service call from someone with more diagnostic skill than me." He then told me that he would call in the problem and get me taken care of.

Well, the next day I heard nothing from Dish, so at 12:13 PM I started a chat session with Dish and made an appointment between 8-12 this Monday. At 10 AM I had not received any text message or email, so I started another chat session. The person on the other end told me that my appoint ment was not in their system; however, he scheduled an appointment between 12-5. Guess what? No call, nobody showed up, nothing. So, I emailed Dish and told them to come get their boxes. Never heard back from that email either. I should have stayed with DTV. 3 years of no problems. Never called them once after the initial install.
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This happens to me every couple of days when watching a recorded program. I'll be watching something for a while, skip past a few commercials and everything goes black, the 'searching' message comes up and then it's back to live viewing onwhatever channel the Joey was on the last time it was NOT playing back a recorded program.
I would try usen Ethernet connection instead to see if it coax problem
I had this same problem with all my Joeys. Dish sent me a replacement Hopper and same problem occured.
I ended up hard-wireing my Hopper to my router.
This appears to have fixed the Joeys!
My wifi signal is kinda weak where the Hopper is so I'm guessing that's what the problem was.
Good luck
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