That's a giant thicket I don't think we want to explore right now. Suffice it to say, I'm going to press hard against Windows-based infrastructure. There are lots of reasons why, and none of them have to do with superiority and everything to do with cost, manageability, available expertise, configurability, and standardization of platform (including the radio nodes). :) On Thu, Feb 21, 2013 at 7:11 PM, Rob Salsgiver <rob@quailsoftltd.net> wrote:
Nope – only for testing – not production <g>****
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Whaddya mean? MS stuff works fine in cars, cellphones, and all sorts of mission critical (?) stuff <g>.****
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Cheers,****
Rob****
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*From:* PSDR [mailto:psdr-bounces@hamwan.org] *On Behalf Of *Benjamin Krueger *Sent:* Thursday, February 21, 2013 5:25 PM
*To:* Puget Sound Data Ring *Subject:* Re: [HamWAN PSDR] toys & tennas****
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If we're even thinking the tiniest bit about putting rotors on remote sites with remote control, stick to unix libs and languages. :)****
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On Thu, Feb 21, 2013 at 4:03 PM, Rob Salsgiver <rob@quailsoftltd.net> wrote:****
And here I was thinking a simple VB or C app. Silly me. <g>****
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I’m sure there’s >some< start/stop lag, but the speed once started seems to be pretty consistent at least. With the position resolution we can probably come up with something one way or the other. ****
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Back to the salt mines…****
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*From:* PSDR [mailto:psdr-bounces@hamwan.org] *On Behalf Of *Bart Kus *Sent:* Thursday, February 21, 2013 3:58 PM *To:* Puget Sound Data Ring *Subject:* Re: [HamWAN PSDR] toys & tennas****
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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.
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.
Here's <http://pyserial.sourceforge.net/> a nice python serial port library. I use the PyVISA <http://pyvisa.sourceforge.net/> 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.
--Bart
On 02/21/2013 03:38 PM, Rob Salsgiver wrote:****
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.****
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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>.****
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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. ****
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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..)****
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Cheers,****
Rob****
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-- ****
Benjamin****
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