[TowerTalk] potmeter / resolver for tower position to digital meter

K8RI K8RI-on-TowerTalk at tm.net
Wed Jun 13 14:31:26 PDT 2012


On 6/13/2012 3:19 PM, Stein-Roar Brobakken wrote:
> Hi
>
> Does anyone have any "homebuild stuff" or drawing or idea how I can build a
> cheap pot-meter / absolute encoder/resolver for tower position to a digital
> meter???
> I have a big gearbox with electric motor.. but just need some assistance to
> get some readout... Like on a rotary tower ....

Another route would be to get some bicycle gears and chain to drive a 
pot, 3T, 10T, what ever. My commercial rotator (PST-61) uses a 10T pot 
but only makes use of about a turn and a half.  Use what ever portion 
you want, build a voltage divider and simple power supply to proved an 
output voltage that will vary from 0 - 360 and read it on a cheap DVM.

However you choose to drive the pot the PS could be a cheap wall wart 
with a calibration resistor between it and the directional indicating 
pot.  As a DVM presents very little load in the voltage mode you could 
simply calculate a voltage divider to get the desired voltages so it'd 
read out directly in degrees.

Let your imagination be your guide. You can go fancy or simple, with 
encoder, decode, or a simple divider. You can e3ven add a bridge circuit 
for a "go to" arrangement.

73

Roger (K8RI)


>
> 73s LA6FJA Rag
> Pse PM la6fja at nrrl.no
>
>
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