[TowerTalk] Homebrew Mast Position Indicator

[David Gilbert]

I built a replacement position indicator for my ProSisTel PST-71D 
rotator after the 10-turn potentiometer failed and I was to lazy to 
bring the rotator down from the tower to replace it.  The solution I 
came up with isn't particularly elegant, but the idea might be useful to 
somebody either as a backup or for some other similar purpose.  The 
components for this thing are very inexpensive ... literally less than 
$20 for the electronics.

Even the software is simple ... this is literally the very first 
software I have ever written for an Arduino and I have no prior C or C++ 
experience.

I built everything with through hole components on a DIY single sided PC 
board, which is one of the reasons the size is pretty large.  If 
somebody was trying to minimize the size by using surface mount 
components on a double-sided board in an optimized case they could do 
MUCH better than I did.  Even better, adding an ATTiny at the tower 
would allow the use of the very inexpensive 2.4 GHz NRF24L01 
transmitter/receiver pairs to eliminate all of the wires between the 
tower and the shack except for the V+ and ground wires ... and a small 
solar panel and battery would avoid even that.

https://youtu.be/y9R5XKCMZuU

I'm sure that there are better ways to do any of this, but I had my 
reasons for doing it this way (one being that I didn't want a mechanical 
linkage to the mast) and at least it does what I wanted.

73,
Dave   AB7E