Re: [amsat-bb] rotor control question

[Marc Vermeersch <marc@xxxxxxxxx>]

Mike,

At 08:12 17/03/99 , ka7hbb@janel.navicom.com wrote:
>Good morning to the BBS.
>   I'm afraid I'm not a programer or even a real good technician but 
>a question about rotor interfaces keeps popping into my head. 
>   How hard would it be to build an interface for rotor control 
>using a "basic stamp" approach? 
>   From the little I've read they come with A>D, D>A, I/O all on one 
>chip basically.   Could one be set up to read just the numerical 
>output of some of the current tracking programs?  Then read a A>D
>line from the meter of the rotor control  and command the output of 
>the appropriate line to enable the up / down, left / right lines for 
>relay control of the rotor?

I'm currently 'improving' a Yeasu rotor + controller for computer control (not for sat tracking but that is irrelevant). This is available commercially for big $$$, but it is a nice project and not to complicated.

The starting point was that I wanted to interface the original controller to a PC via either the serial or parallel port.

The basic stamp approach was one I considered and I looked at the technical possibilities and difficulties of it. It has all you need to command a rotor: digital output to command the rotor to turn left or right and analog input to receive positional feedback. It can also easily interface via a serial port to a PC. It is easy to program once you get used to it. If you are already familiar with it and have a development environment than you can certainly achieve the required result quickly and low cost...

In the end I decided not to go with this solution for reasons of cost and (to a certain extent) complexity in the development environment as I do not have the HW or SW to develop a stamp application. Instead I chose to use an I2C (IIC) solution which pushes all the logic/SW into the PC and only has HW outside the PC.

>   I haven't read too much about the various interfaces and don't 
>remember if any of them use this type of controller or not. 
>One would think it might be the cheapest way to create an easily 
>re-producable interface, but with my back ground it's only a guess. 
>   I'd be interested in hearing from anyone's who's attempted 
>something like this. 
>     Thanks, Mike  KA7HBB

BR, ON1AMV
--
/\/\arc

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