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<div class="moz-cite-prefix">I just got word from Baltic that their
next shipment of 5SHPn radios is 6 weeks away, and is for 80
radios. Looks like we're back to $100 land for the near term.
Not a tragedy, just an annoyance.<br>
<br>
Regarding the rotor, I'm guessing it does smooth start+stop. This
makes the speed non-constant during rotation. Which means the
angular positions are not easily deduced through timing and must
be sampled from the rotor controller. But you mentioned it does
provide the current position at all times, so that should work.
The RF strength samples also take an arbitrary amount of time to
acquire, something in the region of 100ms. It's sounding to me
like we need asynchronous IO on 2 descriptors with timestamping
and possible interpolation so we can spit out reliable
(angle,signal) tuples. Doing it by coming to a full stop @ each
stepping will take too long, so the measures must be done while in
motion and assigned to angles as best as we can.<br>
<br>
<a href="http://pyserial.sourceforge.net/">Here's</a> a nice
python serial port library. I use the <a
href="http://pyvisa.sourceforge.net/">PyVISA</a> library to
communicate with the GPIB instruments. WARNING: It requires
Python 2.7 series. Or at least, I never got it working on Python
3.<br>
<br>
--Bart<br>
<br>
<br>
On 02/21/2013 03:38 PM, Rob Salsgiver wrote:<br>
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<p class="MsoNormal">Got 2 radios – (5SHPn’s) and one of the
ARC-DA5830SD1’s in today from Baltic Networks. So far
received 2 orders from them and they seem to be a dependable
source. Got a couple of rubber ducks and some adapters to
round out the package for a garage to house link so I can do
some playing around with the OS and a few other things.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Ordered and received a Yeasu 5500 AZ/EL
rotor with a FoxDelta ST-2 PC interface (used). Had to make
the cables between the rotor control box & rotor. All
tested out very nicely. FoxDelta is a serial-port driven
interface that can also control the rotor via front panel
push-buttons. The 2 line LCD shows programmed AZ and EL, as
well as current AZ/EL. Protocol for commanding it seems to be
very straightforward and quite simple. Character codes
followed by text or integer values, sent via serial port.
Current position can be read the same way. Calibrated the
unit and put it through full rotation testing via
Hyperterminal <g>.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Commanding and controlling the rotor should
be fairly easy – going to start an application to do a
predictable pattern of scanning for measuring the antenna
radiation patterns. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Bart – we traded a basic outline on the
scan setup, but we’ll need to come up with however you want to
coordinate the position control with the measurement
recording. Do you want to have the position sent to the test
equipment, output the test equipment values to the PC to be
recorded with the position, or something else? I don’t know
that I need the info right this second, but we can start
thinking about it in the background. Sunday will be my first
day to play with it, but barring Murphy it shouldn’t take THAT
long (famous last words..)<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Cheers,<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Rob<o:p></o:p></p>
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style="font-size:8.5pt;font-family:"Verdana","sans-serif";color:#2F2F2F"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
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