[HamWAN PSDR] Hello

Tue May 7 08:35:21 PDT 2013

Right now what I have is a Yaesu G-5500 rotor with a FoxDelta ST2 interface.
I've been working on a VB app to do the basic setup and sending commands
receiving current location data from the rotor.  The command structure is
really quite simple - sending and receiving 1-3 character codes and position
data via a serial port. 

At the moment I have it able to send a position command, move the rotor, and
read the position as it is moving.  The code is crude (crap), but it works.
My problem has been time.  I actually got some time to work on it last night
- (woo hoo!).    More sunshine = less programming time <g>.   Factor in work
+ teenagers + upcoming high school graduation + upcoming college graduation
+ a "honey do" list + farm and animals = Life as we know it (sigh, snivel,
whine - ok, done now)

I picked up an interface to read the GPIB data, but I either didn't read the
ad well enough or got switched - I haven't gone back and looked (irrelevant
now anyway).  The interface I got will work, it just needs to be setup on an
older OS, then it will work fine (no newer drivers) - either that or I go
buy a newer interface (and pay more attention this time).

If you have the time and capability to crank this out quicker (and make Bart
happy <g>), I'm more than willing to hand over the gear and let you have at
it!  I just want it back when all is said and done so I can eventually do
some satellite work.  If it doesn't it for some reason, I'll keep plugging
away at it and get it done as soon as  I can!

For anyone who's interested I've attached a manual for Yeasu's interface.
While it doesn't match the FoxDelta ST2, it has the command set listed in
the last few pages.  It also addresses some scan speed and other parameters
as well.

Cheers,

Rob

From: PSDR [mailto:psdr-bounces at hamwan.org] On Behalf Of Caleb Skurdal
Sent: Tuesday, May 07, 2013 1:19 AM
To: Puget Sound Data Ring
Subject: Re: [HamWAN PSDR] Hello

Hi Bart,
The first two items on the list are pieces I could do. The third I'd have to
look into more. I've never done graphics rendering so that may be better
left for others. Though it should be easy to find info on getting it
rendered. 

What type of interfaces do the antenna rotator and microwave instruments
use? If you have model numbers or interface specs I can look up
documentation and see if I can design a software solution to setup,
interface, and control them all to work together.

I imagine getting a client server solution running with less than
milliseconds RT should take a few days. A direct web solution should be
simple.

I have raspberry pi Linux box that may work well.

Regards,
Caleb Skurdal 

Hi Caleb!

The list must be feeling under the weather if I'm the first person to reply
to you.  :P  There's been a lot more chatter recently on freenode/#HamWAN.
Feel free to come in and idle if nothing else.

So we had the Tuesday meeting (you should dial in if you can, details on
front page of hamwan.org) and gave some thought to what might be up your
alley.  One of the things we're trying to do is to improve our lab
capabilities in terms of antenna radiation measurement.  Right now we can
take 1-dimensional slices of these patterns and produce results like this:

./temp/cache/6daf471697293d9e55e0b9a31e79da09_1.png

You can tell from the above that this particular antenna is fairly well
behaved, nice even power spread over a 120 degree front beamwidth, and
reasonable sidelobes towards the rear.

But 1D scans don't tell the whole story.  So we bought some hardware to
control antenna movement in 2 rotational dimensions.  When this hardware is
guided properly, along with the signal measurement equipment, we could
generate full blown 3D radiation pattern images like this:

http://www.antenna-theory.com/antennas/reflectors/dish3.jpg

You can see so much more detail here, since it shows exactly what happens at
all possible radiation angles in our 3D universe.  One more dimension could
be added to this though, and that is frequency.  It would be good to see how
these 3D patterns change shape as the antennas are swept through their
operational frequency range.  We could also look at characterizing
polarization as yet another dimension.

So, long story short, the guy who's been tinkering with getting all the
control software written for running these measurements has been swamped for
time.  Perhaps with your CS background you wouldn't find it too difficult to
help bring this measurement setup into reality?  Here's what's needed:

1) 2-axis control commands need to be sent over a serial port.  Timing and
synchronization and reproducibility are considerations here, so it's not
entirely arbitrary how this is done.
2) Commands need to be sent to possibly multiple microwave instruments over
a GPIB interface.  At the very least, commands to read signal strength.
Better yet though would be commands to setup all the right signal generator
+ spectrum analyzer parameters and control frequency / etc over the course
of the measurements.
3) Once the data is there in RAM, it needs to be made presentable somehow on
the web.  WebGL is sounding like a good option for rendering these 3D images
in browsers.  People should be able to move the shape around and zoom in/out
on it.  There should also be sliders to control any other dimensions, like
frequency, or polarity angle.  Right now, I'm not aware of any widget that
can present such data on the web.  It would also be good for the data to
stay in its raw form on the back-end so that it can be computed on easily in
future (unpredictable) ways.  The first radiation pattern I showed you is
rendered in real-time by the web server from a couple arrays pasted into the
wiki page.  A similar approach in 3D land would be good.

Does any of this sound interesting?  Between Rob Salsgiver and myself, we
can provide all the necessary hardware.  It's the software we're missing.
You can see my current 1D software on the Antenna Analysis
<https://www.hamwan.org/t/tiki-index.php?page=Antenna+Analysis&structure=Ham
WAN>  page, attached at the bottom.

Let me know if this or something else would be up your alley,

--Bart

On 4/27/2013 10:16 PM, Caleb Skurdal wrote:

Hi all,
I'm Caleb Skurdal AD7U. I met Bart today at the Northwest Linux fest in
Bellingham. I've been a ham for about 17 years; though I've been tinkering
with electronics for over 22. I have a Computer Science background and all
levels of the network stack I find highly interesting. This an exciting
project from the purely technical standpoint and I see it as very valuable
to the community from a emergency preparedness perspective. I'm excited to
learn more about the project and hopefully to be able to contribute to
successfully implementing and growing it.

Regards,
Caleb Skurdal

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