Polarotor Servo Controller

[pullo]

hello;

I have built the servo controller from John Gilman . Works fine in test conditions. I hope he does well even when my c-band dish is placed. Here some pictures. Greetings from Belgium Marc.

 

[Anole]

Congratulations on a fine build. - :up
Let us know how you like using it in the field.

 

[comfrey]

Cool, there have been some folks looking for just that type of device.

 

[Anole]

They had a few brands of commercial units, 25 years ago.
Linuxman collected several different models along the way.
He recently cleared out all his toys for a move, and I believe they all got sold.

There was some comment about including one in a care package he recently sent me, but it'll be next week 'till I get it and see what gives. :up

 

[Magic Static]

hello;

I have built the servo controller from John Gilman . Works fine in test conditions. I hope he does well even when my c-band dish is placed. Here some pictures. Greetings from Belgium Marc.







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Where did you find the plans for that? I've been looking but not coming up with anything close.

 

[SatelliteAV]

Nice Build! :high5:

 

[pullo]

Polarotor Servo Controller

Budfoot Files

 

[pullo]

Does anyone interested in the PCB. Let me know. I send a scan of the pcb.
marc

 

[budfoot]

Beautiful looking box. Mine is a lot cruder. Still working tho.

 

[Magic Static]

Does anyone interested in the PCB. Let me know. I send a scan of the pcb.
marc

Yes please upload that scan

 

[pullo]

Here the scan. The quality could be better. Before placing the components look at the picture. The additional components near the 7805 (2x 100nF - diode) are not really necessary. Marc success.

 

[Hermitman]

Something to consider for the cheap do-it-yourselfers. Attached is a picture of a servo control unit. Its made by cutting the servo control sections from a Uniden UST-6000 circuit board, screwing them together and connecting some wires. Ugly, yes but it works like a champ. The slide switch selects the vertical or horizontal position. The trimmers actually set the position of the servo, one for vert, the other for horz. The rheostat is a fine tuner for going + or - 20 degrees from the set position for those slightly off-skew satellites. The servo is powered by the 5 volt voltage regulator and the whole unit works off a 12 volt power supply. I noticed the UST-2200 also has a skew knob on the front panel and vert/horz adjustments on the bottom like the UST-6000 so it probably has a similar circuit board to chop up.

And to those with a 4dtv 922 but are using a lnbf, I found that the servo control system is still functional even though LNBF is selected in the menus. You can bring up the servo controls by hitting the left/right arrow on the remote and move the servo on one dish without effecting the lnbf of your 4DTV dish. Something that might be useful. Good luck.

 

[John Popper]

very interesting

 

[N0QBH]

I was checking the servo signals on the back of my Uniden 4400 with my oscilloscope and noticed the Vcc and pulse are at 1.2v and 2v respectively until it receives a command to change polarity. Then both go to about 5v for a few seconds before reverting back to the low voltage mode.
My system works fine and the reason I was looking into it is to build my own voltage to PWM adapter. Did the engineers do that to save on servo wear & tear?

Mike

 

[Anole]

food for thought

I don't know, but there is another matter to consider that we've all overlooked...

We go to a lot of trouble on orthomode feeds to supply 18 volts to both LNBs.
Some of the C-band LNBs don't work as well on 12..13 volts as they do on 18.
So, shouldn't the servo controller also manage to keep 18 volts on the LNB, even if it uses 12/18 volts from the receiver to determine polarity?