[amsat-bb] Re: Automated ISS station

[Jeff Mock]

Oo, that looks very clean.  I like the self-adhesive standoffs you use 
for the relay board.  I find them amazingly useful, ...but shouldn't you 
remove the protective plastic wrap from the LCD on your Icom rig, I mean 
really :)

jeff

Andrew Rich wrote:
> I got fed up with noisy power supplies to here is my solution.
> 
> 1. A linux computer runs Predict as a server
> 2. A perl script wakes up every minute, and asks predict if ISS is above the
> horizon.
> 3. If ISS is above the horizon, a command is sent to a parrallel port
> control card.
> 4. The control toggles a relay
> 5. The relay action turns off the battery charger and engages the radio
> 6. When the ISS is below the horizon once more, the script turns off the
> relay.
> 7. The radio turns off and the battery charger re-engages.
> 8. The radio has a 30 minute time out set as well to guard against problems.
> 
> So far it works really well.
> 
> The rack clicks and comes to life as ISS rises and goes back to sleep when
> it descends.
> 
> Here is a photo.
> 
> http://www.tech-software.net/rack_psu.jpg
> 
> I am not having much luck with the helix's i have built the front to back
> seems bad.
> 
> I have however had great success on 2m, with an 8 element quad.
> 
> Cheers
> 
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Andrew Rich VK4TEC
> vk4tec at people.net.au
> http://www.tech-software.net
> 
> 
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