My mum has one of those Satellite boxes that runs constantly even when she's not watching her shows, gives out tons of heat, and it uses Scart input so she can't even get the high Def stuff the satellite picks up. Plus it adds to the chaos of wires behind the TV.

So I decided to scrap it, and repurposed an old Raspberry Pi with an LNB USB stick^[Linux compatible ones are hard to come by. Sundtek is a good brand, but they basically no longer exist, so shipping takes weeks]. LNB/Coax cables usually need signal boosting, so I was nervous that a 5V Raspberry Pi couldn't do it^[13V/19V is usually the standard], but its genuinely fine!

Using Tvheadend as the streaming server^[Satellite Position --> Transponder Frequency + Polarity --> Scan for 'Muxes' --> Assign a Mux to a channel], and Kodi as the main interface. The LNB stick came with an IR remote and Kodi already captures most of the default signals, so everything just works. She gets HD satellite channels, and it uses less than 1p of electricity.

Plus, I put a PoE hat on it, so it's only a single ethernet cable now going to the back of the TV where I mounted the Pi, and I can SSH into it whenever I want.

I'm now thinking: well, finally found a use case to have an always on SBC at my mum's, maybe it's time to put HomeAssistant on it as well and start automating her house