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Welcome to the dual-axis rotors control interface
page. I have developed this automatic antenna pointing inteface specifically for amateur radio satellite tracking operations.
This rotor control interface is quite simple to build. The circuit consists only one PIC16F877 microcontroller
IC and a few transistor drivers. Please take a moment and look around. You might find something helpful !
Satellite tracking is done most commonly on a computer with a satellite
tracking software. The FODTrack ( by XQ2FOD ) software, which I am experimenting with this control interface, is available
for download at www.amsat.org. It uses serial ( COM ) port ( baud 1200 ) on your PC to drive the external azimuth and elevation rotors to position
the antenna via the interface described here.
Assembler software to program the PIC16F877 is available for download at
www.microchip.com and the P16PRO printer port PIC eeprom programming software is available for download at www.picallw.com .
PIC16F877 microcontroller uart serial port baud rate is 1200 and the crystal
clock frequency is 10 MHz. The two-axis ( azimuth and elevation ) rotor drive output pins are RB1, RB2, RB4 and RB5.
Rotors position analog input pins are AN0/RA0 and AN1/RA1.
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