The FOD-Track PC board is available from FAR Circuits ( www.farcircuits.net ), and will cost about $30 in parts to build. Mark Spencer from the ARRL also recently put together the Sat688, a PIC-based controller which was featured in the AMSAT Journal, available in limited quantities. A nice feature was that it could be built for RS-232, USB, or both. You might try dropping him a line at mspencer@arrl.org to see if any are still available. FOD-Track is directly supported by SatPC32, Ham Radio Deluxe, Nova, and most other tracking programs. The Sat688 is supported in Nova by the EasyComm 1 setting, and in SatPC32 as a SAEBRTrack Box. It will probably work with other programs that offer one of those choices.
I have used the FOD-Track for a couple of years now and am very happy with it. I also picked up one of the Sat688 boards and am just finishing assembly of it. (I'm still holding onto my club's KCT... they don't want to let it go yet)
Lastly, there are also the LVB-Tracker from Howard Long, G6LVB www.g6lvb.com and the W0LMD Tracker www.ultimatecharger.com , although I don't really know much about them.
George, KA3HSW
----- Original Message ----- From: "Larry" n1miw@cox.net To: "Amsat Mailing List (E-mail)" amsat-bb@amsat.org Sent: Sunday, January 07, 2007 8:03 PM Subject: [amsat-bb] rotor interface options
Good day and happy New Year to all! I was just wondering what optionsare available to connect an az-el rotor controller to the PC. The Kansas City Tracker isn't in production, as well as the Trackbox, except on the used market. What else can we use? 73's... Larry N1MIW