[TowerTalk] synchro to RS232

[Martin Sole]

Jim (and others),

I'm moving away from the selsyn idea I think. I've had some good 
encouragement from Jeff at Green Heron and I think there are better 
alternatives today, without getting too fancy. My current plan is to 
replace the large gear sprocket that drives the selsyn with a smaller 
one that will then allow me to use a 3 turn potentiometer with an 
acceptable degree of resolution. The chain driving the selsyn is 
apparently a No.25 roller chain so fairly common.

In part this is to try and reduce the amount of copper between shack and 
tower. The Telrex rotator uses 12 conductors and I'm hoping to get that 
down to 6 maximum. Should be possible by doing the limit switch and 
reversal switching with some relays tower side.

You asked how common synchro/selsyns in ham applications might be. My 
guess is not as much as they probably were 30 years ago. Rotators were 
probably the biggest use. I guess they could have found use as a sort of 
crude remote tuning system. I presume they were also used in weather 
vane wind direction indicators.

I'm still interested to be able to read one with a modern device, an 
Arduino would be the ideal I think but as you have noted in another post 
the AC needs to be addressed. Can that not simple be done by providing, 
externally, a DC offset so the result is just a sinusoidally varying 
signal from near zero to the 5v Arduino maximum? I think this would only 
need to be a block of code or a small library that could be used in 
different applications.

Martin, HS0ZED



On 20/11/2018 02:09, jimlux wrote:
> Just how common are synchro/selsyns in ham applications..
>
> I'd be willing to do a Arduino thing that can read one and generate 
> USB serial/RS232 output or a display.
>
> I think I gave away my box of motors to some ambitious soul - Does 
> anyone know of a place to get a cheap, representative example of the 
> sending end?  Anything less than $50 is fine.
>
> A 400 Hz size 19 or 23 would be just fine.
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