[TowerTalk] wireless rotor

[Jack Brindle]

Maybe.

Putting a major noise source (micro controller with lots of high-speed clocks) right at the single most important quiet area might not be that good of an idea. Adding chokes and bypass caps to knock down the noise can only go so far. I'd rather not have the noise generator at the antenna in any case.

Which brings up the question, what kind of birdies and noise does the Green Heron and similar devices add?

Jack B.

On Apr 10, 2013, at 7:06 AM, Jim Lux <jimlux at earthlink.net> wrote:

> On 4/10/13 6:38 AM, Charles Lind wrote:
>> I've been using Green Heron Everywhere for three years to control a rotor
>> and switching for five antennas with no failures or downtime.  Saves a lots
>> of expensive cable, the groundhogs can't eat the wireless signal, and if
>> something were to go wrong, I wouldn't have to dig up 400 feet of cable.
>> Chuck, N8CL
>> 
>> 
> 
> this really is how hams should be heading.. with cheap wireless interfaces, Arduinos with 802.11 or Zigbee, etc.
> 
> There's a nice $50 relay board from Velleman (K8056) that has 8 SPST relays on it and can be controlled by RS232, TTL serial, discrete 8 bits, or a RF receiver module.  They also have 16 and 4 relay boards.
> THere's probably a ton of things from SparkFun that stick right onto a Arduino.
> 
> 
> There's even a new Ethernet Relay card from Velleman
> http://www.velleman.eu/products/view/?id=407510
> $150 on Amazon..  Pretty slick.
> 
> There's a Arduino with Ethernet built in and lots of example programs out there to do basic control stuff (or complex control stuff).
> 
> It won't be long before someone builds an open source rotator controller using an Arduino and H bridge or relay board. They're cheap, easy to learn to program (either in C using free tools, or in the sort of C-like Arduino IDE) and plenty smart enough to run a control loop for a rotator.
> 
> Get yourself a nice WiFi bridge (I like using the 5 GHz band so I don't have to fight all the 2.4 GHz stuff) and you're done.
> 
> 
> 
> And, hey, it uses *radio*... we can move beyond wired telegraphy to, gosh, wireless.
> 
> (I will happily buy a beverage of choice for the first person who controls their antenna with a spark gap transmitter and coherer, though.  Very steampunk..)
> 
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