Some rotors use a microswitch feedback system, where there is a momentary "click" every few degrees.  It's pretty easy to build a system that counts clicks and controls a set of relays based on it.  I did this 20 years ago with a Basic Stamp-II.  Should be fairly trivial to port to an Arduino, especially since you wouldn't have to deal with a 360 degree coordinate system in a system that was limited to mostly 8 bit math due to a lack of variable space.  That was fun...  See http://home.wavecable.com/~ko6th/ at the top of the page.  (Yeah, the site desperately needs an update...  The current software version is 1.4.)

The rotors I used had a resolution of 6 degrees for Azimuth, and 10 degrees for Elevation, which is well within the beamwidth of the antennas. 

Greg  KO6TH


Russ Ramirez wrote:
Tim, I had some success with this with an Alliance Tenna rotor a few years ago, but the older (Arduino Mega based) K3NG rotator controller would "hunt" in terms of Elevation because these old rotors generally do not have position feedback in the form of a potentiometer the way the Yaesu rotors do. The G-5500(DC) setup is hard to beat. 

Good luck! 
Russ
K0WFS


On Sat, Mar 6, 2021 at 6:18 PM Timothy Tapio <[email protected]> wrote:
Anyone have a simple interface for a low budget TV rotor (RCA) to allow SatPC32 to control azimuth? I do have intentions of obtaining a GS-5500 but that is a few months down the road....meanwhile I have an Alaskan Arrow still in box that I want to use until I can get the sat antenna pack from Amsat....

Any Raspberry Pi or Arduino interfaces? It's beyond my level to try to program something myself.



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