Hi Jim,
Yes, that would be a possibility.
The "in between" is indeed a garage - technically attached to our home but as far as cabnle paths go, somewhat removed to to an obfuscated connection between respective attics.
A spare, old PC is not scarce... may consider. Besides, who doesn't have CAT5 in their garage... or close to it? ;-)
Another has suggested I just go ahead and home run the standard cables all the way to the shack / office so as to have manual control in addition to PZC control... and a simpler intermediate step. That will mean an additional splice block but can be done as long as the rotors are happy with a lengthier run... which was part of my initial concern.
Thanks,
Lowell
------ Original Message ------ Received: Fri, 21 Aug 2009 10:00:36 PM CDT From: Jim Walls jim@k6ccc.org To: Amsat-BB amsat-bb@amsat.org Subject: [amsat-bb] Re: Semi-remoting the controller for a Yaesu G5400
Lowell White wrote:
My Yaesu G-5400 rotor pair is about 150' from my shack.
I am wanting to gauge the feasibility of putting the rotor controller
within
100' (due to on-hand control cable lengths) of the antennas (in a
garage).
I would then run a separate (on-hand) PC-controller cable (fewer
conductors as
using the DIN interface on the back of the controller) to the rotor
controller
box from a PC and adapter / interface (if needed) in my shack (approx.
50').
Is it crazy to consider or should I just pony up for more of the (dual)
rotor
control cable and run the control box itself in my shack?
What would I need to do at the PC end to appropriately 'signal' the 'semi-remote' control box.
I am making an assumption, that may not be the case. I am assuming that there is a protected location closer to the tower. For example the tower is next to the garage and the shack is in the house. If that is the case, what I would do is run the remote control PC at the remote location, and control it over your LAN with a remote desktop program such as VNC (http://www.realvnc.com/). That does make the assumption that you have an extra PC floating around, but for most of us the question is not IF we have one, but rather which of of the several should I use... It also assumes that you have a house LAN - although if you don't, most PCs these days have a network connection already built in so it would be easy to implement.
-- 73
Jim Walls - K6CCC jim@k6ccc.org Ofc: 818-548-4804 http://home.earthlink.net/~k6ccc AMSAT Member 32537 - WSWSS Member 395
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