Im building a rotor controller that will be used for my satellite antenna rotator, which is the main project I am currently working on. This small controller will be used to manually adjust the azimuth and elevation of my rig along as be able to manually adjust the increment at which my stepper motors will rotate the rig. The OLED and LED are just the for the love of the game, they serve as mere indicators.
Finished the last step before begining to work on the physical Rotor Controlller
I looked into the firmware needed to code my controller and I came to the conclusion that I wont be using the typical QMK framework to code by controller since after some quick research, coding OLED screens and doing other things i require from this pad wont work as intended or will work with a lot of unnecessary work ( such as routing the inputs to other code), so I decided to code the whole thing in python using another framework. Until now i looked into the basic code needed to make it work, but i plan on going deeper with the developpement once i physically assemble the controller since debugging will be a lot easier.
below is a screenshot that doesnt have any affiliate with the code, its just a placeholder. :)
FINALLY finishing my 3d case for my antenna rotor controller
The whole project is pretty simplistic looking back, the case consists of 2 parts(Lid+Case), each with basic decoration such as text and images. I originally wanted to add a mesh texture above the MCU to let some sort of airflow into the case and make sure the electronics dont overheat, but after some reflection and a little bit of laziness, I let that idea go. For the PCB, nothings really changed since the last devlog, I added a LED connected to Vcc to signal that the board is receiving power when I plug it in.
My next step is to program the firmware for the board and print the case at my local library.
PS: Took me about 8h from start to finish ( Schematic+PCB+ Case) to design what you see in the pictures below and considering that those 8h include the full learning process ( for Onshape + Kicad), Im rather proud.
Finished designing the PCB/Schematic for my Antenna Rotator Controller
For the schematic, I mostly relied on the example provided by Hack Club, but added an LED to signal if the board is receiving power correctly. The PCB consists of the MCU, an OLED screen (which I plan to program to display the azimuth/elevation actively as the dish is mounted to the rotator), a rotary encoder (that I plan to program to manually adjust the increment of the steps of the stepper motors controlling the mount), and finally the 4 buttons (2 of which control the azimuth and 2 of which control the elevation).
That’s it for this devlog. I’m keeping it short since this is a proof of concept for me. I’m currently working on the case for the controller using Onshape and will upload a devlog as soon as that is completed.
