The Green Heron Everyware products already do this. The limiting factors
usually end up being the power requirements of the rotator, at least when it
comes to shrinking the designs of the transformers and cabling.
Otherwise, there’s nothing preventing you from mounting one of those boxes up
on your tower, running AC to it, then communicating with it via software.
Ken N2ZN
> On Dec 18, 2018, at 4:30 PM, Charles Gallo <charlie@thegallos.com> wrote:
>
>> On Tue, December 18, 2018 3:25 pm, Wilson Lamb wrote:
>> All that big rotator stuff is more work than I would do.
>> However, If I were doing it and had long runs I'd look into using 120V for
>> the long runs, with appropriate transformers at the ends. I can even
>> imagine using one run to a tower and then relays to distribute it to
>> various rotators. Overcoming cable drop by increasing gauge gets expensive
>> quickly. I HAVE used long low voltage runs for other purposes.
>> In those cases I used a power supply with plenty of headroom and remote
>> sensing. It worked well and assured proper voltage at the remote device
>> under all operating conditions (of current requirement) WL
> <snip>
>
> I've always thought that the future of rotors was that we feed power up
> the tower, and use say TCP/IP to the rotor, and put the brains up there.
> Before Phillips co-opted the Zigbee standard, I thought that Zigbee would
> be a good way to get the command up the tower
>
> I mean, at how low the prices are for embedded controllers (face it, a
> ATMega - the chip in a Uno is under $2) Wouldn't it just be nice to
> calibrate the rotor once, then be able to tell it "Hey, turn 315 degs",
> and it does it, no muss, no fuss
>
> If the ARRL really wanted to be proactive with the hobby, they should get
> together with RSGB and JARL (and the others) and promulgate a standard for
> TCP/IP control of devices
>
> "Hey, rotor, do this", hey amp, do that, hey antenna switch, do the other"
> Do the Mfgs HAVE to follow it? Nope. But I'd bet if the ARRL/JARL and
> RSGB all got together and agreed on a standard, you'd see some falling in
> line
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> TowerTalk mailing list
> TowerTalk@contesting.com
> http://lists.contesting.com/mailman/listinfo/towertalk
_______________________________________________
_______________________________________________
TowerTalk mailing list
TowerTalk@contesting.com
http://lists.contesting.com/mailman/listinfo/towertalk
|