[amsat-bb] Fodtrack Serial rotor controller on HamLib

[Greg D]

Ok, some progress.  I went back to my modifications to predict to see 
what exactly I had done, and one of the mods was to set the serial port 
stop bits to 2.  I recall now that the Basic Stamp that drives my 
controller logic isn't fast enough to parse the serial stream with only one.

Setting -C stop_bits=2 on the command line brought the rotor to life!

Now the next problem...  I notice that Gpredict freezes while tracking 
is running.  No GUI updates, though the tracking (both rig and rotor) 
keeps going.  The rest of the system is fine, nowever, and top doesn't 
show anything stuck in a spin loop.  Disengaging the rotor control 
(which takes a long time sometimes) brings things back.  Feels like a 
timeout is at fault.

I took a capture of the traffic on the serial port, and it appears that 
the program is polling the controller for its position (command C2).  My 
controller doesn't support that command, so that's probably what's 
hanging things up.  Poking around I find -C timeout=1 Ha! Now we're 
looking good...

Final runstring:  rotctld -r /dev/ttyS3 -s 9600 -m 603 -C stop_bits=2 -C 
timeout=1

Thanks again,

Greg  KO6TH


Jim Jerzycke wrote:
> I would suspect it's using the Yaesu GS-232 protocol.
>
> Jim  KQ6EA
>
>
> On 06/22/2014 06:08 PM, Greg D wrote:
>> Hi folks,
>>
>> So all this talk about Gpredict got me to look at updating my own 
>> setup, which pre-dated the modern Gpredict capabilites.  But being so 
>> archaic, I need some help connecting the dots...
>>
>> I have Gpredict / Hamlib talking to my Yaesu FT-736R radio for 
>> Doppler tracking just fine, but the rotor is a problem.  My 
>> controller is home-brewed, and emulates the subset of the "Yaesu 
>> serial protocol" as output from the original DOS version of 
>> FODTrack.  The syntax is the letter "W" followed by the Azimuth, a 
>> space, the Elevation, and terminated with a carriage return (hex 
>> 0d).  Both the Az and El are whole decimal integers.  When I moved to 
>> Linux and Predict (the ncurses version) in 2002, I modified the 
>> software to copy that same syntax, and all was fine.
>>
>> Tab forward over a decade to my question:  What model "Yaesu 
>> controller" was FODTrack thinking it was talking to?  I need to find 
>> an equivalent model for Hamlib's rotctl daemon, and none of the 
>> choices seem to match.  They all seem to want to talk to a single 
>> rotor (Az or El, not both).  Is there an equivalent model, Yaesu or 
>> otherwise, that accepts "Waaa eee\n" for Az + El positioning?
>>
>> Thanks,
>>
>> Greg  KO6TH
>>
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>
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