Remember that that movie where the guy wanted to come back to earth from mars And he came across a Russia ship with a bear 🐻 in the program 😂 The way it spoke And the American put python on it I think ? It was a great movie
He’s got a lot more patience than I do. He keeps saying this annoying problem, that annoying problem, yet shows not a hint of annoyance. I would have already been throwing things around, getting mad, cussing. Kudos to you sir!
Exactly! I pretty much “get it” but watch, mostly, for the pure perseverance of it. The tech is fun, but the problem-solving, with the “no worries, see what happens, stick-to-it-ivness” is great.
@@4muhammedsiraaji71if it was back in the 90s, that'd be easy, but it's 2024 unfortunately and doing that is all but impossible, unless you are using one of the very precious few remaining analog coax services.
Sorry buddy, ever since DTV / DISH went digital, they have encoded their transmissions, and all the boxes are designed to take sat encryption updates. The good old days of paying a DTV technician under the table for a decoder are gone. Besides the'res nothing good on TV anyway. @@4muhammedsiraaji71
Your cheesy telephone cable may be the culprit. Higher bit-rates require better cables -- even for these "glacial by todays network standards" speeds. Back when I was a young pup, we ran RS-232 everywhere -- because you had terminals and a central computer. Getting things to work above 9600BPS required better cabling--particularly for longer cabling.
I haven't had time to sign up for Discord, too distracted with all the other chat apps! Email is probably the easiest, gabe (at) saveitforparts (dot com).
I bought one of these for dirt cheap off ebay with a broken power port years ago. I never had time to really hook anything up to it, but knowing that port has RS485 on it is neat! I'm going to have to dig it up.
@@saveitforparts may want to look into the "wisper" wspr mode radio clock sync tech for such a task? Also a very fast/wide network switch synced helps.
Maybe one of the dipswitches will turn off that self calibration / setellite search mode. If it needs maintainance or some work inside after commissioning, it would be logical for the operator to turn off the feature before powering it up.
14:40 - I’d suggest marking the hard limits and from those, find the midpoint. Then use that midpoint for your initial aim. Really interesting project, always useful to have a real world problem to get your teeth into. Good to see your code too, gives an idea of how you’re moving the dish. I’m not as good with Python as you are but I’m getting better.
I'm not great at Python either, and I'm sure there are cleaner and more elegant ways of doing most of these routines. Hopefully no one's using my code as a learning example 😅
@@saveitforparts - It only matters if you’re working as part of a larger team, which you aren’t. Any decent coder can read your code - even I know what you’re doing line by line.
The horrible noise when it hits the limits may not be destructive, it's probably just the stepper skipping steps which shouldn't cause any damage. If the belt is skipping them it probably needs to be tensioned more.
i really am mind blown on how you can figure out how to do things like this, if a satellite was put in front of me and i had to make something of it i would be lost!! I really do enjoy watching your content although most of it i dont understand, but it does not matter!
I actually overheard some chatter about Bias-Ts the other day, apparently some of them are designed to bow out if they're getting too much voltage. For instance, using a USB passthrough bias-T while also turning on the Bias-T built into an SDR. I dunno much about it and I don't know if it's applicable to what you're doing. They were talking about SDRPlay internal bias-t and that it has a series of fuses that are designed to pop if too much voltage and the bias-t is disabled, but then goes back to normal after a set period of time. Like, the fuses were meant to blow but it wasn't a permanent thing. I am no electrician.
Congrats on getting some coherent imaging towards the end! I know never to count you out, no matter how bleak things look towards the middle of the video. 😂
I find your satellite projects very interesting. It's nice that the cat has made a valuable contribution to the project. I hope you find a solution to the problem. I love Python; it's a very powerful language. I use it on the Raspberry Pi Nano.
The L-band patch behind what amounts to a chunk of circular-waveguide will NOT work very well at all. The feedpoint "plumbing" on these dishes is also quite specialized to a particular range of wavelengths -- in the case of these Tailgater type dishes, that's Ku-band, at 11-12GHz, as opposed to the 1.5GHz you're trying for. I'd get stick with the original LNB, and tap into the RF goop at some appropriate point. The card appears to have a multi-output power supply--one of those outputs will be supplying 11-15V for the LNB.
Love your videos. Because of you i bought a RTL-SDR 😀 I would recommend putting a raspberry there and trash the original controller. Those stepper can be better controlled directly. With this setup you also can add switch-endstops.
I like the longer video personally, even if the end result isn't considered a "success." Generally not really into radio telescopes persay, but anything RF is generally an interest of mine. These little dishes are really pretty neat honestly.
This is what you get for $300 from Winegard, a dish that lasts maybe 12 months and then has to be replaced because it destroyed itself. Good old planned end-of-life marketing!
@@saveitforparts maybe they assume you would be powering it up only a few times a year as you setup and take down a motor home from its lot space in a park. I also agree that is shameful and they should have charged an extra 20 to 50 bux and made the thing a bit better quality.
You need to explore the world in circuit debuggers! ICDs are a lot of fun, you don't necessarily have to know programming language. A lot of it is very similar to what you've been doing elsewhere.
Your bodge of usb to serial to rs485 to rj11 breakout is both glorious and also likely to be a source of headaches. Usb to serial adapters are incredibly fickle, and can be huge sources of headaches. I spent a while working with PLCs which were typically programmed over serial (or rs485, sometimes even rs485 through an rj11 jack like you've got) and the problem was invariably that the PLC hated the usb to serial adapter.
My quick-out-the-door shoes are clogs made from cut down fishing boots. When they stop being waterproof they get turned into these, then they get worn until they fall off my feet. I may have a problem...
Great as always! Still blown away by the amount of these readily available in your area. I'm debating checking the listings out east and just pay the shipping to snag one. I'd really like to see a raspberry pi integration. My idea would be to track the ISS ham repeater using the live/estimated data available in many apps or other web services. I'm sure there are many other pan/tilt devices that would be better suited to support the antenna required for two way contact but a quick and dirty "listen only" antenna may be doable in that package using the protected cover as well. An automated setup triggered by viable passes would be the ultimate goal! Keep tinkering!
10:38 "That still sounds terrible to me, there there has to be a better way to know the drive limit than just slamming into it and grinding the gears like that" - I liked it ! It reminded me of the grunts and grinds sounds coming out an old Apple ][ floppy disk drive.
It seems that dish uses the same steppers that a 3d printer uses. You might be able to just get a simple stepper board and use gcode to run it. Will make life easier and you won’t hit those limits.
i would hate to have my brain replaced with a raspberry pie, that would be crumby if Hal hears you say that you better keep him away from the pod bay doors in future, dont ever give him control of those, he wont open them when you ask him to even if you ask nicely
Hey I'm an instant subscriber this guy's content is in my wheelhouse.....love it.😊 I don't know how I went this long without knowing about this channel.... at last you've arrived😂
that’s going some true modern ham radio! There is no crystal ladded SSB filters with distorted speech (because for the SSB needs very precsion tuning in receiver and transmitter on the same frequency) , there is no long wires with EMI noise from AC power lines. One thing - personally I don`t like the Python programming language - there are blocks of code without braces. But it is my personal opinion🙂 - each can choose programming language yourself.
Nice work! You've had more patience with the janky controller board that I would have ever had. I would recommend ditching the existing controller and just replacing it with a raspi or something. The vast majority of the functionality of the original board was in handling the RF signal and you're not taking advantage of that and just using it as a very contentious stepper motor controller. If you rolled your own stepper controller you could easily add some rotary encoders and end stops. You could also add a GPS module, an accelerometer and cheap compass module to the base so the unit can automagically handle rough alignment and to point the dish in the approximate direction of a satellite before using RF strength to home in on a signal.
OK I'm convinced this is 100% satire. What is he looking at what is he picking up what is that equipment that is using what would be the best case scenario what he's trying to do. He also keeps a somewhat smirk in a sarcastic theme alluding to the fact that what he's doing is ridiculous. I absolutely loved every single from the terrible engineering of the rotating satellite dish to his set up in The Times that he would choose to record satellite data. This guy is absolute gold and needs to be protected at all costs.
Nope, nothing fake about it! The only parts I edited out were the boring failures before I got it working. I wouldn't say these are best-case at all, I was hoping for slightly better images and fewer indexing problems, but my code is still rough. I did get some better Ku-band pictures with a similar dish in a previous video, with that one you can pick out individual TV satellites in the sky: ua-cam.com/video/lVOTZxNCgTM/v-deo.html
You should consider using Onstep (open source telescope stepper controller) to drive the steppers. It's pretty simple to make, and is already designed to control steppers to go to celestial coordinates. Then you could use an INDI telescope driver to connect and script whatever you felt like. Dump the onboard control entirely. You'd need to get the ratio of the reduction from those pulleys, the type of stepper motor etc. It supports limit switches, and microstepping also, so the accuarcy would probably be far superior to the built on system since it's meant for taking pictures through telescopes through long focal lengths.
A suggestion: maybe put a 6DoF or 9DoF IMU on the dish or feed horn, as you can then get azimuth from the B field, and altitude from the accelerometer. That might make for better output than trusting the open loop control on the stepper motors. Great work! Also, I used to live up in Roseville, and was a regular over at Ax-Man. Tell 'em Pete says hi when you next stop in!
When starting your computer hit the settings key which is typically either f2 or del. Look at your bios settings for access to your serial port. Very easy once you know until next time.. take care
From this angle, it looks like you got in a fight with the satellite, and you lost(messy hair, beard patch missing, etc.). Now you're throwing in the towel, lol..... 27:00
In terms of stepper control maybe an old 3d printer board would come in handy... serial / easy interface for steppers / easy hardware config for end stops. Track that sat with Gcode! :-) Thanks for the video SIFP always a treat!
I always wonder if the dish is big enough for HRPT receiving, the signal would be a lot stronger than GOES satellites. That way you can made an automated NOAA/METEOR/METOP HRPT receiver that is weatherproof :)
Using their circuits is low res, rip it all out use your own stepper and encoder , use micro-stepping to get the res up to better than .5 of a degree .01 would be better. Use a better SDR like a hackRF or bladeRF these do hf to 6Ghz. The antenna for L band is a hard one as that dish wont give you the narrow beam you need at those freq's. [not even 1m in dia] Even if you replaced the dish with a 20 turn helix the res would be too wide. For this to work you need 2-3m dish. That said you could make you satcom imager HD by doing all these mods -on KA band. Keep up the good work your are on the right track.
"Just one more satelite dish bros... I promise its the last one. Just one more. One more satelite dish.. just one more. I only need one more.."
I mean the more you have, the higher resolution for “The Very Small Array”, no?
@@ericlotze7724 Just one more satelite dish...
@@ericlotze7724 "Just one more dish..."
We love recreational python coding
I turned a robot head on mars with python
🐍
Strangely was able to download gear files from limewire 😂❤❤❤🥹
Remember that that movie where the guy wanted to come back to earth from mars
And he came across a Russia ship with a bear 🐻 in the program 😂
The way it spoke
And the American put python on it I think ? It was a great movie
Yes I moved a robot 🤖 head on mars with python 🐍
UA-cam commands helped 😆
me too.. literally
He’s got a lot more patience than I do. He keeps saying this annoying problem, that annoying problem, yet shows not a hint of annoyance. I would have already been throwing things around, getting mad, cussing. Kudos to you sir!
HAL usually refers to the Hardware Abstraction Layer... but hey... the HAL9000 has the utmost enthusiasm for the mission, so that works too!
Hal was a reference to IBM, just one letter up in the alphabet. H-I, A-B, L-M.
you called
@@Azazeal777 nice!
I don't understand half of what he's doing but it's the professionaly winging it that has me hooked.
Also: what was the cencored.png?👀
Ha, it's an overlay for editing, in case I have something too dumb or sketchy. Mostly a joke, I forget when I last used it.
I don't have the slightest clue what you are doing, but i really enjoy watching you do whatever it is your doing.
Me to 😊
Exactly! I pretty much “get it” but watch, mostly, for the pure perseverance of it. The tech is fun, but the problem-solving, with the “no worries, see what happens, stick-to-it-ivness” is great.
Easily one of the coolest channels I've ever come across. I love the scripting too.
❤me too. Awesome channel!
You could use a rotary encoder to show the exact position of the dish and use that as error correction.
Hey.. I have a challenge could you be having a solution to it and help me out. I want to learn how to hack pay tv and watch channels free of charge
@@4muhammedsiraaji71 Most modern satellite tv is encrypted and most people don't have that kind of tech or skill to be able to crack it.
@@4muhammedsiraaji71if it was back in the 90s, that'd be easy, but it's 2024 unfortunately and doing that is all but impossible, unless you are using one of the very precious few remaining analog coax services.
Sorry buddy, ever since DTV / DISH went digital, they have encoded their transmissions, and all the boxes are designed to take sat encryption updates. The good old days of paying a DTV technician under the table for a decoder are gone. Besides the'res nothing good on TV anyway. @@4muhammedsiraaji71
@@4muhammedsiraaji71skull
I like the filming of the screen, it fits the vibe of the channel better lol
Well now that I know it can be done, I simply must make a radio telescope!
Was the serial port on the Linux server possibly just disabled in the BIOS? I love the huge range of tech and scripting you cover on this channel BTW!
Could be, I never checked that!
This was my first thought
Your cheesy telephone cable may be the culprit. Higher bit-rates require better cables -- even for these "glacial by todays network standards" speeds. Back when I was a young pup, we ran RS-232 everywhere -- because you had terminals and a central computer. Getting things to work above 9600BPS required better cabling--particularly for longer cabling.
Amazing work for a backyard enthusiast! Love watching your projects develop. Love from NZ
there is a gigantic base of people that love breaking down this low level especially satellite stuff. we can donate things to you. or at least i can.
What kinda stuff? I'm looking to donate a couple broken VuQube dishes to someone myself, just to free up garage space 😅
@@saveitforparts is there a discord or something we can share info?
I'd love to get my hands on one of these that I can hack up! I might need to source locally though.
@@kb9mtd-aaronwebb if in USA u can have some
I haven't had time to sign up for Discord, too distracted with all the other chat apps! Email is probably the easiest, gabe (at) saveitforparts (dot com).
Great how you back engineered it. Loved the "Cat Scanner" Your Cat loves helping you out all of the time.
Hands down one of my favourite channels.
I bought one of these for dirt cheap off ebay with a broken power port years ago. I never had time to really hook anything up to it, but knowing that port has RS485 on it is neat! I'm going to have to dig it up.
Don't give up, this is one of the most interesting things I've seen in a while!
I really enjoy your videos! Your determination is inspiring!
The programmer interface Is JTAG. Used in FPGA and ARM processors
before long he'll have enough RV dishes to build his own very large sparse array radio telescope
I tried building a "Very Small Array" but couldn't get stuff to sync right.
@@saveitforparts may want to look into the "wisper" wspr mode radio clock sync tech for such a task?
Also a very fast/wide network switch synced helps.
Maybe one of the dipswitches will turn off that self calibration / setellite search mode. If it needs maintainance or some work inside after commissioning, it would be logical for the operator to turn off the feature before powering it up.
That set of tools made me drop my jaw in awe lol
14:40 - I’d suggest marking the hard limits and from those, find the midpoint. Then use that midpoint for your initial aim.
Really interesting project, always useful to have a real world problem to get your teeth into. Good to see your code too, gives an idea of how you’re moving the dish. I’m not as good with Python as you are but I’m getting better.
I'm not great at Python either, and I'm sure there are cleaner and more elegant ways of doing most of these routines. Hopefully no one's using my code as a learning example 😅
@@saveitforparts - It only matters if you’re working as part of a larger team, which you aren’t. Any decent coder can read your code - even I know what you’re doing line by line.
Add a Arduino controlled oscillator that squirts a little bit of RF in your target band at the end of every scan to give an in-band sync pulse!
The horrible noise when it hits the limits may not be destructive, it's probably just the stepper skipping steps which shouldn't cause any damage. If the belt is skipping them it probably needs to be tensioned more.
That thumbnail… looks like a modified birdbath from the year 2100…
i really am mind blown on how you can figure out how to do things like this, if a satellite was put in front of me and i had to make something of it i would be lost!! I really do enjoy watching your content although most of it i dont understand, but it does not matter!
"Wish this thing would stop rotating."
I'm afraid I can't do that, Saveitforparts.
I actually overheard some chatter about Bias-Ts the other day, apparently some of them are designed to bow out if they're getting too much voltage. For instance, using a USB passthrough bias-T while also turning on the Bias-T built into an SDR. I dunno much about it and I don't know if it's applicable to what you're doing. They were talking about SDRPlay internal bias-t and that it has a series of fuses that are designed to pop if too much voltage and the bias-t is disabled, but then goes back to normal after a set period of time. Like, the fuses were meant to blow but it wasn't a permanent thing. I am no electrician.
Congrats on getting some coherent imaging towards the end! I know never to count you out, no matter how bleak things look towards the middle of the video. 😂
I find your satellite projects very interesting. It's nice that the cat has made a valuable contribution to the project. I hope you find a solution to the problem. I love Python; it's a very powerful language. I use it on the Raspberry Pi Nano.
HAL means hardware abstraction layer... and is like a kernel on a system
It keeps telling me it's sorry, but it can't open the pod bay doors 😢
Fantastic. Such a great video. Watched the desert trip series with my bro. Great content. Got him interested in the sky!
The L-band patch behind what amounts to a chunk of circular-waveguide will NOT work very well at all. The feedpoint "plumbing" on these dishes is also quite specialized to a particular range of wavelengths -- in the case of these Tailgater type dishes, that's Ku-band, at 11-12GHz, as opposed to the 1.5GHz you're trying for. I'd get stick with the original LNB, and tap into the RF goop at some appropriate point. The card appears to have a multi-output power supply--one of those outputs will be supplying 11-15V for the LNB.
I love UA-cam videos like these... really feeds my Layman's curiosity.😊
Amazing how you can see the background from the fence and other objects.
Love your videos. Because of you i bought a RTL-SDR 😀 I would recommend putting a raspberry there and trash the original controller. Those stepper can be better controlled directly. With this setup you also can add switch-endstops.
I like the longer video personally, even if the end result isn't considered a "success." Generally not really into radio telescopes persay, but anything RF is generally an interest of mine. These little dishes are really pretty neat honestly.
love your content, i would love to see a video about the basic tools and software you need to start hacking like this
Damned if I know, I bought a $15 Software Defined Radio in 2020 and it just snowballed from there😅
The Milk Crate Pedestal Mount is the Best.... True DIY at Heart. Very Fun - Very Informative. Good for you...
Man, if our 12.8m/5.6-tonne dish found its limits by just grinding its gears, it'd be a smoking pile of rubble in no time :)
This is what you get for $300 from Winegard, a dish that lasts maybe 12 months and then has to be replaced because it destroyed itself. Good old planned end-of-life marketing!
@@saveitforparts maybe they assume you would be powering it up only a few times a year as you setup and take down a motor home from its lot space in a park. I also agree that is shameful and they should have charged an extra 20 to 50 bux and made the thing a bit better quality.
Man it's beautiful to see how excited while working with this.
Keep it up! :)
Dude, your channel and content is the absolute coolest. Greetings from the Twin Cities!
I know nothing about any of this but it's always fascinated me so I searched UA-cam and here we are 😂
The Winegard Company is in my hometown of Burlington Iowa.
You really gotta watch out for falling squirrels
You need to explore the world in circuit debuggers!
ICDs are a lot of fun, you don't necessarily have to know programming language.
A lot of it is very similar to what you've been doing elsewhere.
That would make a super cool security camera mount: the constant panning and noise would make a great deterrent
Ha, I've actually been taking apart security camera mounts to use for antennas 😂
I don't understand everything, but I understand enough to be fascinated. Thank you!
At 2:14 it is JTAG interface which can help debugging and dumping/writing flash memory.
Your bodge of usb to serial to rs485 to rj11 breakout is both glorious and also likely to be a source of headaches. Usb to serial adapters are incredibly fickle, and can be huge sources of headaches.
I spent a while working with PLCs which were typically programmed over serial (or rs485, sometimes even rs485 through an rj11 jack like you've got) and the problem was invariably that the PLC hated the usb to serial adapter.
Now open the pod bay doors.
Remember when doing these experiments, always wear your heavy-duty battle-rated, tactical sandals :)
My quick-out-the-door shoes are clogs made from cut down fishing boots. When they stop being waterproof they get turned into these, then they get worn until they fall off my feet. I may have a problem...
It's really fun when I accidentally wear them to work and only notice when I get to the office 😂
But OSHA approved for all industrial environments, right? :)
Those darn falling squirrels
Great as always! Still blown away by the amount of these readily available in your area. I'm debating checking the listings out east and just pay the shipping to snag one. I'd really like to see a raspberry pi integration. My idea would be to track the ISS ham repeater using the live/estimated data available in many apps or other web services. I'm sure there are many other pan/tilt devices that would be better suited to support the antenna required for two way contact but a quick and dirty "listen only" antenna may be doable in that package using the protected cover as well. An automated setup triggered by viable passes would be the ultimate goal! Keep tinkering!
10:38 "That still sounds terrible to me, there there has to be a better way to know the drive limit than just slamming into it and grinding the gears like that" - I liked it ! It reminded me of the grunts and grinds sounds coming out an old Apple ][ floppy disk drive.
Such a huge video. Thank you so much! Take a rest bro. You deserve it.
It seems that dish uses the same steppers that a 3d printer uses. You might be able to just get a simple stepper board and use gcode to run it. Will make life easier and you won’t hit those limits.
i would hate to have my brain replaced with a raspberry pie, that would be crumby if Hal hears you say that you better keep him away from the pod bay doors in future, dont ever give him control of those, he wont open them when you ask him to even if you ask nicely
Hey I'm an instant subscriber this guy's content is in my wheelhouse.....love it.😊
I don't know how I went this long without knowing about this channel.... at last you've arrived😂
First time viewing your stuff. I liked and subscribed not only because it's interesting, but because of your StarGate SG1 dvds
i always find the most interesting videos when i am about to sleep, so i leave this tactical dot .
16:47 had me dying ☠️ cat scan😂😂😂
that’s going some true modern ham radio! There is no crystal ladded SSB filters with distorted speech (because for the SSB needs very precsion tuning in receiver and transmitter on the same frequency) , there is no long wires with EMI noise from AC power lines. One thing - personally I don`t like the Python programming language - there are blocks of code without braces. But it is my personal opinion🙂 - each can choose programming language yourself.
great effort my man! wish I had someone like you in my area to do sat projects like this with
Dude adafruit motor controller for the pi zero will control 2 steppers and you can add limit switches thats how i refited mine. I love your channel!
This looks so cool ! Makes me want to get into whatever this is.
Hal, change the A35 unit. Do it now..... but, will I dream?😂😂😂
You heard it here folks..... Minnesotan trees are talking to the satellites at 1694 MHz
Nice work! You've had more patience with the janky controller board that I would have ever had. I would recommend ditching the existing controller and just replacing it with a raspi or something. The vast majority of the functionality of the original board was in handling the RF signal and you're not taking advantage of that and just using it as a very contentious stepper motor controller. If you rolled your own stepper controller you could easily add some rotary encoders and end stops. You could also add a GPS module, an accelerometer and cheap compass module to the base so the unit can automagically handle rough alignment and to point the dish in the approximate direction of a satellite before using RF strength to home in on a signal.
Wow this is way beyond my DIY skills, but also very interesting.
I am in love with your videos ❤
Change the feedhorn out with a 5ghz or 2.4ghz and check out the local wifi. You should be able to pick up wifi around 5-10miles.
OK I'm convinced this is 100% satire. What is he looking at what is he picking up what is that equipment that is using what would be the best case scenario what he's trying to do. He also keeps a somewhat smirk in a sarcastic theme alluding to the fact that what he's doing is ridiculous. I absolutely loved every single from the terrible engineering of the rotating satellite dish to his set up in The Times that he would choose to record satellite data. This guy is absolute gold and needs to be protected at all costs.
Nope, nothing fake about it! The only parts I edited out were the boring failures before I got it working. I wouldn't say these are best-case at all, I was hoping for slightly better images and fewer indexing problems, but my code is still rough. I did get some better Ku-band pictures with a similar dish in a previous video, with that one you can pick out individual TV satellites in the sky: ua-cam.com/video/lVOTZxNCgTM/v-deo.html
Structural milk crates... sounds like the Apple Boxes used in the film and prop industry... useful AF for sure...
"I keep coming out here and doing it again." That's the one shot in golf that make you play another 18 😉
Amazing work! Very inspiring!
6:35 "I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that..."
"By that point I only had $46 in cash"
😏
This, Gen Z, is what is known as the Lost Art of Haggling, also known as paying less than the asking price.
The sidekick in every apocalypse movie 🎬 that does the science-y stuff.
At least you're only chasing a serial port spinning on one axis with one G gravity.
All I'm saying is that...the thing wasn't running until the cat came and helped. Cat comes over, gives you the ole 1 2 and viola....she runs!
You should consider using Onstep (open source telescope stepper controller) to drive the steppers. It's pretty simple to make, and is already designed to control steppers to go to celestial coordinates. Then you could use an INDI telescope driver to connect and script whatever you felt like. Dump the onboard control entirely. You'd need to get the ratio of the reduction from those pulleys, the type of stepper motor etc. It supports limit switches, and microstepping also, so the accuarcy would probably be far superior to the built on system since it's meant for taking pictures through telescopes through long focal lengths.
That sounds interesting! will put this on the to-do list :-)
Awesome work sir
Very cool. I bet you could hack it into a star finding / tracking telescope. An optical telescope that is.
26:18 This website is insane! I didn't realize how many satellites Earth has, even including rocket parts and debris!
Yep, there's a lot! That's why some people start to get nervous about collisions and Kessler Syndrome!
Got lotsa Cat! Not going to complain about a heatmap of a kitty!
😸🐈
VCC is power, so it makes sense that wouldn't be used, as the cable frankenstein you made is for data only, and is not transmitting any power
How about building a radio telescope and having Elon give it a ride to Mars.
A suggestion: maybe put a 6DoF or 9DoF IMU on the dish or feed horn, as you can then get azimuth from the B field, and altitude from the accelerometer. That might make for better output than trusting the open loop control on the stepper motors. Great work!
Also, I used to live up in Roseville, and was a regular over at Ax-Man. Tell 'em Pete says hi when you next stop in!
nice and warm on minnesota rn
Your Cat scan went well. Your self portatrait was inspired. Upvoted and good day.
When starting your computer hit the settings key which is typically either f2 or del. Look at your bios settings for access to your serial port. Very easy once you know until next time.. take care
From this angle, it looks like you got in a fight with the satellite, and you lost(messy hair, beard patch missing, etc.). Now you're throwing in the towel, lol..... 27:00
That dish setup might work for tracking and chasing radiosondes.
In terms of stepper control maybe an old 3d printer board would come in handy... serial / easy interface for steppers / easy hardware config for end stops. Track that sat with Gcode! :-) Thanks for the video SIFP always a treat!
Also, remember my challenge? Apparently if you smash the computers in the game, you can get a motherboard. So you can add that into the challenge.
I always wonder if the dish is big enough for HRPT receiving, the signal would be a lot stronger than GOES satellites. That way you can made an automated NOAA/METEOR/METOP HRPT receiver that is weatherproof :)
Using their circuits is low res, rip it all out use your own stepper and encoder , use micro-stepping to get the res up to better than .5 of a degree .01 would be better. Use a better SDR like a hackRF or bladeRF these do hf to 6Ghz. The antenna for L band is a hard one as that dish wont give you the narrow beam you need at those freq's. [not even 1m in dia] Even if you replaced the dish with a 20 turn helix the res would be too wide. For this to work you need 2-3m dish. That said you could make you satcom imager HD by doing all these mods -on KA band. Keep up the good work your are on the right track.
10:36 in 3D printers, they use a switch limiter. The moment that it hits the switch it sends a signal to stop the motor.
I love these videos so much. You are a blessing to us all!