Back in the days when you didn’t pay for your TV programming, it was common to have a yagi antenna on the roof. If you were lucky enough to have every TV station in the area in the same direction, you could just point the antenna and forget it. If you didn’t, you needed an antenna rotator. These days, rotators are more often found on communication antennas like ham radio beams. For terrestrial use, the antenna only needs to swing around and doesn’t need to change elevation. However, it does take a stout motor because wind loading can put a lot of force on the system.
[SP3TYF] has a HyGain AR-303 rotator and decided to build an Arduino-based controller for it. The finished product has an LCD and is able to drive a 24 V motor. You can control the azimuth of the antenna with a knob or via the computer.
[Waldemar Lewandowski] built a variant of the rotor (taking some additional ideas from [SQ9OUB]) and made a video of the device in operation (see below). The video is a little quiet, but you’ll get the ideas and you can see the original [SP3TYF] version’s code and documentation.
If you want to work satellites, you need an additional rotation axis. And if you think about it, rotating an antenna and moving a solar panel, probably have a lot in common — the sun is floating around in space, too.
My project of yet another rotator controller (but without Arduino, is that a hack?):
http://lb9mg.no/2015/06/22/universal-antenna-rotator-controller/
What the heck language is this in?
polish
Lol.
https://translate.googleusercontent.com/translate_c?depth=1&hl=en&nv=1&rurl=translate.google.com&sl=auto&tl=en&u=http://www.tyfek.republika.pl/Sterownik_rotora_arduino/sterownik_rotora_arduino.html
Co, nie mówisz po polsku?!?
[I don’t, but I couldn’t resist the temptation to put that in ;-)]
And mine with an Arduino controller :-)
http://pe1br.nl/?page_id=496
If the mechanism was a worm gear would that solves the wind loading problem?
The worm gear would prevent the rotator form swinging in the breeze. If everything is locked then things start to break when the wind builds.
My commercial rortator does include a brake mechanism but that only holds the antenna still in light winds
Also build something similar few years ago, but for wifi and based on OpenWrt + Atmega8. Antenna scan whole it’s working range and then gets back to the strongest signal. Algorithms for signal detection was very naive, but it was working. Of course indoor only, since it was PoC build. http://morethanuser.blogspot.com/2012/10/openwrt-antenna-rotator.html
Another Arduino antenna rotator: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KFL_Bg-K34A
A couple of videos later he has elevation added for satellite tracking.
Open source 3D printed rotator
https://remoteqth.com/3d-rotator.php
and another arduino controler
https://remoteqth.com/single-rotator-interface.php
“Back in the days”? People are leaving cable in droves and antennas are a very viable option. Check out r/cordcutters