This project is intended for tracking HAM radio satellites using stock available cheep components and 3D printer.
- Antena is 5+8 elem Yagi from dk7zb
- Rotator was heavily inspired from tysonpower.de
It shall be remotely operated (Bluetooth), it shall bear heavier antennas (preparing for moonscating), it shall be portable, it shall bring fun.
- 2000 x 15 x 15 allu rectangle tube for antenna beam
- two 2000 x 20 x 20 allu rectangle tube for rotator frame and azimuth axe
- ?x 8mm allu tubes for yagi elements
- 1x 12mm allu tube for yagi radiator
- plenty of M4 screws with nuts and waschers
- 4mm plywood for rotator sides
- 2x TB6600 stepper drivers
- 2x NEMA24 stepper motors
- 2 endstops from eBay (optional and not really used)
- Wemos Lolin32 as rotator controller (other ESP32 development board should do too)
- PLA filanment (ABS was bending too much for big parts)
- OpenSCAD & Slic3r & RepetierHost for 3d modelling and printing
- platformio for SW build
- gpredict for satellite tracking
- STL and scad projects and fotos are at thingiverse
Install platformio and libraries Streaming and ESP8266_SSD1306
platformio lib --global install Streaming
platformio lib --global install ESP8266_SSD1306
Run in the RotatorController directory
platformio run -t upload
- Without power, orient the rotator to the north and level antena horizontally.
- Power up motors and ESP32 controller
- In your bluetooth search for a device named ESP32 Rotator and add that device.
- In the terminal connect to it
sudo rfcomm connect 1 <device mac address>
- In another terminal window start a rotator control daemon
rotctld -r /dev/rfcomm1 -s 115200 -m 603
The 603 is a rotator model 603, 'GS-232B' - Then in gpredict add a new rotator. Choose some name, host is
localhost
, port:4533
, Az type:0 - 180 - 360
, Max Az:360
, Max El:180
The rotator can commands like speed and park to zero. However the rotctld nor it's stand-allone application are using them. Just stop, move to azimuth and elevation, asking for current azimuth and elevation is actually used by the daemon.