I have made a script that asks predict where GO-32 is.

It runs once a second.

It works out if it has to turn off the battery charger and engage the radio.

The script also uses a file to simulate rotator position (till I get the hardware setup).

It makes a diciscion to turn on and off any of 8 relays, hanging off the parrallel port. (Power ON/OFF , Rotator CW/CCW)

I figured I have to have some sort of computer controlling the rotators, so push the process control back to the PC instead of the outboard controller.

In this case, any old A/D would do for the rotator sense.

Next after that will be frequency control.

That is the beauty of LINUX, it is a one stop shop.

-------------------------------------------------------------- sat_controller.pl ---------------------------------------------------------- -----------------------

#!/usr/bin/perl # # sat_controller.pl # # Andrew Rich VK4TEC - January 2008; # # Turn on and off power to rack and control a rotator # use Socket; my $port = 1210; my ($predict_server, $satellite); while () { open (sat,"/maint/scripts/sat_pwr_control.sat"); while (<sat>) { chop; $satellite = $_; } close (sat); # # Ask predict where the satellite is # $predict_server = "localhost"; my ($d1, $d2, $d3, $d4, $rawserver) = gethostbyname($predict_server); my $serveraddr = pack("Sna4x8", 2, $port, $rawserver); my $prototype = getprotobyname('udp'); socket(SOCKET,2,SOCK_DGRAM,$prototype) || die("No Socket\n"); $| = 1; # no buffering $SIG{ALRM} = &time_out; #alarm(10); # Force exit if no response from server print "Satellite: $satellite\n"; send(SOCKET, "GET_SAT $satellite\0" , 0 , $serveraddr) or die("UDP send failed $!\n"); my $server_response = ''; # required by recv function recv(SOCKET, $server_response, 100, 0) or die "UDP recv failed $!\n"; my ($name, $lon, $lat, $az, $el, $aos_seconds, $foot) = split /\n/, $server_response; my $aos_time_date = gmtime($aos_seconds); close(SOCKET); print "Azimuth: $az\n"; print "Elevation: $el\n"; # # Work out if we need to power up the rack # if ($el =~ m/-/) { #system ("/maint/scripts/lptout 128"); print "Power Relay: OFF\n"; } else { #system ("/maint/scripts/lptout 64"); print "Power Relay: ON\n"; } # # Turn a rotator # open (rot_pos_file , "/maint/scripts/sat_controller.pos"); while (<rot_pos_file>) { $rotpos = $_; } close (rot_pos); print "ROT_POS: $rotpos\n"; $diff = $rotpos - $az; print "DIFF: $diff\n"; if ($diff > 5) { if ($diff =~ m/-/) { system ("/maint/scripts/lptout 1"); print "MOTOR: CW\n"; $rotpos = $rotpos +5; open (rot_pos , "> /maint/scripts/sat_controller.pos"); print rot_pos $rotpos; close (rot_pos_file); } else { system ("/maint/scripts/lptout 2"); print "MOTOR: CCW\n"; $rotpos = $rotpos -5; open (rot_pos_file , "> /maint/scripts/sat_controller.pos"); print rot_pos_file $rotpos; close (rot_pos_file); } } sleep 1; system ("/maint/scripts/lptout 0"); print "\n"; sleep 1; } sub time_out { die "Server not responding for satellite $satellite\n"; }

---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Andrew Rich VK4TEC vk4tec@people.net.au http://www.tech-software.net