I have some days off and I would like to put the antenna rotator in the backyard to move a small loop antenna. Every time I want to turn it I have to go outside, and if it is raining or late in the night it is a bit of a hassle.
The thing is that I don’t want to crawl under the house to pass the control cable, so maybe it can be done via web with a ESP2866 module.
I would be passing the DC power to move the rotator (+24 V) via the coaxial cable, and the “only” thing I need to do is to activate two relays (CW, CCW) and read an analog voltage back (the rotator has a potentiometer to read its angle).
So far I have been looking at heaps of youtube tutorials (and I have tried a few) about switching LED lights on and off and reading temperature with web browsers, but I haven’t came across an example where you can drive two relays AND read an analog voltage back.
So any hint/help is greatly appreciated. I have all the bits in the house, I can take them to the space one of these days to show what do I want to do.
I’m in Sydney until this Thursday, so I’ll not be able to go this Wednesday.
I managed to put together a solution to control the antenna rotator involving using an ESP8266 as a remote COM port (with the ESP-link firmware flashed on it), and from there I use an arduino uno to control the rotator. It should be possible to control the rotator from the ESP8266 as well, as it has enough resources available.
The previous solution involved a COM port cable going from the PC (where the software with the map/compass allows the user to point to a location in the map) to the arduino controller (the one driving the relays and sensing the analog voltage from the rotator). The only addition is the use of the ESP8266 as a wireless COM port.
However, I would like to learn a bit about embedding web pages in the ESP8266 in order to be able to command the rotator form any device with a web browser (without having to install any software). I’ll put the bits together and will take them to the Space, hopefully someone there can give me some ideas/hints.
Heading to Canberra this morning. I have been using the Arduino IDE so far (just a couple of evenings tinkering) but at some point I would like to move to some platform with debugging capabilities.
