Re: [amsat-bb] Fodtrack Serial rotor controller on HamLib

23 Jun 2014

      Ok, some progress.  I went back to my modifications to predict to see 
what exactly I had done, and one of the mods was to set the serial port 
stop bits to 2.  I recall now that the Basic Stamp that drives my 
controller logic isn't fast enough to parse the serial stream with only one.
Setting -C stop_bits=2 on the command line brought the rotor to life!
Now the next problem...  I notice that Gpredict freezes while tracking 
is running.  No GUI updates, though the tracking (both rig and rotor) 
keeps going.  The rest of the system is fine, nowever, and top doesn't 
show anything stuck in a spin loop.  Disengaging the rotor control 
(which takes a long time sometimes) brings things back.  Feels like a 
timeout is at fault.
I took a capture of the traffic on the serial port, and it appears that 
the program is polling the controller for its position (command C2).  My 
controller doesn't support that command, so that's probably what's 
hanging things up.  Poking around I find -C timeout=1 Ha! Now we're 
looking good...
Final runstring:  rotctld -r /dev/ttyS3 -s 9600 -m 603 -C stop_bits=2 -C 
timeout=1
Thanks again,
Greg  KO6TH
Jim Jerzycke wrote:
...
I would suspect it's using the Yaesu GS-232 protocol.
Jim  KQ6EA
On 06/22/2014 06:08 PM, Greg D wrote:
...
Hi folks,
So all this talk about Gpredict got me to look at updating my own 
setup, which pre-dated the modern Gpredict capabilites.  But being so 
archaic, I need some help connecting the dots...
I have Gpredict / Hamlib talking to my Yaesu FT-736R radio for 
Doppler tracking just fine, but the rotor is a problem.  My 
controller is home-brewed, and emulates the subset of the "Yaesu 
serial protocol" as output from the original DOS version of 
FODTrack.  The syntax is the letter "W" followed by the Azimuth, a 
space, the Elevation, and terminated with a carriage return (hex 
0d).  Both the Az and El are whole decimal integers.  When I moved to 
Linux and Predict (the ncurses version) in 2002, I modified the 
software to copy that same syntax, and all was fine.
Tab forward over a decade to my question:  What model "Yaesu 
controller" was FODTrack thinking it was talking to?  I need to find 
an equivalent model for Hamlib's rotctl daemon, and none of the 
choices seem to match.  They all seem to want to talk to a single 
rotor (Az or El, not both).  Is there an equivalent model, Yaesu or 
otherwise, that accepts "Waaa eee\n" for Az + El positioning?
Thanks,
Greg  KO6TH

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