[amsat-bb] Re: [SPAM] RE: Re: Making your own rotator controller

[Howard Long]

Hi Andrew

> Is there a one stop shop for the LVB ?

AMSAT-UK sells worldwide: bare boards for the tracker and USB option, as
well as a complete kit of parts but without a box.

AMSAT-NA sells a number of different options, all the way up to a completely
built unit in a rather slick looking box.

I have been very surprised by the regular requests for completely built
units, as well as the kits of parts. One of my design criteria was to use
easily available parts (many in the average ham's stock), but the
convenience of a kit has been very popular, as have the completely built
units. I was blown away by the popularity of the boards at Dayton this year,
and yet again at the Symposium where Gould announced the ready-built units.

I'm old fashioned I guess! I hand wired four or five on perf board before
doing the PCB. FWIW I estimate there are now 650 boards out there. Not sure
how many are actually built and how many are on the "things to do" pile!
Judging by the number of enquiries I get, I am sure plenty are built.

One final thing, the 0.8a firmware (needed to ignore the NUL characters
generated by Predict) is at
http://www.g6lvb.com/Articles/LVBTracker/LVBTrackV0_8a.hex. I've yet to put
a link to this on my website.

Cheers, Howard