Nothing wrong with trying. I am willing to donate a project motor (without the electronics). Just let me know if anyone wants to try it.
GBox V4000 with Polarator control
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Nothing wrong with trying. I am willing to donate a project motor (without the electronics). Just let me know if anyone wants to try it.
I would like to have a v4000 but will settle for a v3000, when will you have them in stock???????
I might be in the market for 2 as well [Now thats 2 votes then right? Like they say in politics, vote early and often........hehehe] considering at any given time at LEAST one system is in a state of perpetual flux [tuning and testing] I like the price window, especially the low side.............hint, hint.
I do have another Q. though Sadoun, is the plan/design allowing for support of 'user variable' for lack of a better term skew adjustment. Since DiSEqC is basicly a 'one way or the other' control signal, such a feature would need to be accessed outside of the automated protocols. An automatic/manual mode with adjustments from the box and possible even from the remote. I was going to add maybe even some pre-set memories for the manual skewpoints but that is surely pushing it.....lol. I'm just curious if it was part of the plan, or was even considered. It would be a good thing since all the birds dont play nice when it comes to skew.
Anyway thanks for your support and consideration on this enhancement. Hopefully it will all work out good for all parties involved in the project.
I need to bone up on some research, and do a lil' testing. Servos were widely used on WW II ships and were an electro-mechanical balance type of circut. Turn one on one end and the other moved accordingly. Back in the 70's, I knew a guy that made a rotor system for a homebrew quad antenna using two servomotors from an Army /Navy Surplus. He has long since passed away, so I'm not able to gather any further info from that source.
I've got several 'spare' polarotor motors around here, think I'll try a few common/cross connecting schemes, current limit a 5v source [ to hopefully not let any magic smoke out] and see if I can get one to remotelty position the other.........then to translate that into a balanced bridge 100% solid state form........Unfortunately none of that even makes the 1st page of the honey-do list.................lol
I do have another Q. though Sadoun, is the plan/design allowing for support of 'user variable' for lack of a better term skew adjustment. Since DiSEqC is basicly a 'one way or the other' control signal, such a feature would need to be accessed outside of the automated protocols. An automatic/manual mode with adjustments from the box and possible even from the remote. I was going to add maybe even some pre-set memories for the manual skewpoints but that is surely pushing it.....lol. I'm just curious if it was part of the plan, or was even considered. It would be a good thing since all the birds dont play nice when it comes to skew.
Anyway thanks for your support and consideration on this enhancement. Hopefully it will all work out good for all parties involved in the project.
I need to bone up on some research, and do a lil' testing. Servos were widely used on WW II ships and were an electro-mechanical balance type of circut. Turn one on one end and the other moved accordingly. Back in the 70's, I knew a guy that made a rotor system for a homebrew quad antenna using two servomotors from an Army /Navy Surplus. He has long since passed away, so I'm not able to gather any further info from that source.
I've got several 'spare' polarotor motors around here, think I'll try a few common/cross connecting schemes, current limit a 5v source [ to hopefully not let any magic smoke out] and see if I can get one to remotelty position the other.........then to translate that into a balanced bridge 100% solid state form........Unfortunately none of that even makes the 1st page of the honey-do list.................lol
what's wrong with your receiver commanding a diseqc motor to move to that satellite when you want to watch something else. Am i missing the point your FTA receiver doesn't have diseqc motor driving capability or....?
My receiver can control a diseqc motor and store satellite positions, and I can even go in the setup menu and do very minor fine tune movements E/W if my precisely set satellite position gets messed up for whatever reason.
The point of the question, as I see it is in the word "occasionally". It would be nice to move a dish by crank, rather than by hand, esp. it would track the arc and return to the point of orgin. My occaion might be once in six months for 10 minutes. Spending even $75 might be too much, but looking at the beast I have, might be $15 in parts! Yeah, I know, Anole, ----PICTURES------!
I voted "definitely interested" but as with everything it will depend on the price and whether the "early adopters" tell me that it works well enough for what I need. I have a C/Ku feedhorn and it does have the little blue box (it also has a 90° elbow going to the Ku feedhorn which I'm sure was necessary when the thing was created, but LNBs are so small now I keep wondering if I should remove the elbow and bolt on the LNB at a right angle). The thing that will really make the difference is if I can take my old GI analog receiver out of the picture and still have the same degree of control over dish movement and skew. Granted that it would be really nice to have DiSEqC control over dish positioning.
One suggestion, if you don't already have this in the design, please don't have the dish start to move the moment you flip to a channel - I tend to tune through channels and I may inadvertently light on one that's on the other side of the arc and I don't really want to go there, but if the dish starts to move immediately it will put a lot of extra wear on the dish motor. I figure there should be a two to five second delay (user should be able to set this) between the time the channel is selected and dish movement actually starts. Some folks might not want this but personally I'd rather not burn out the positioner arm motor prematurely due to excessive dish movement, particularly short jerky movements as I flip past channels.
One suggestion, if you don't already have this in the design, please don't have the dish start to move the moment you flip to a channel - I tend to tune through channels and I may inadvertently light on one that's on the other side of the arc and I don't really want to go there, but if the dish starts to move immediately it will put a lot of extra wear on the dish motor. I figure there should be a two to five second delay (user should be able to set this) between the time the channel is selected and dish movement actually starts. Some folks might not want this but personally I'd rather not burn out the positioner arm motor prematurely due to excessive dish movement, particularly short jerky movements as I flip past channels.
Polarity servo's use a logic pulse that varies from ~1 to 2 milliseconds to control postion they are way different from the old 60 and 400 hz electromechanical servo's. Google Basic Stamp for lots of good stuff on them. The RC crowd uses the same type of positioners to control steering for model cars and planes, albiet the servomotors are way more sturdy!
Thanks for the re-direct to that info Cadsulfide, I'll take a look at it for sure.
I realize (digital) PWM is not a new technology, but had no idea it was 'old enough' to be incorporated into the 1st gen CoRotor control schemes. I suspect after perusing the lit you referenced, I'll be back to pick your brains on some of the muddy parts. Are you a pic or stamp programmer as well? I've come across lots of neat stuff that could be done if a guy has the savy for it.
I realize (digital) PWM is not a new technology, but had no idea it was 'old enough' to be incorporated into the 1st gen CoRotor control schemes. I suspect after perusing the lit you referenced, I'll be back to pick your brains on some of the muddy parts. Are you a pic or stamp programmer as well? I've come across lots of neat stuff that could be done if a guy has the savy for it.
two weeks 'n counting
Sounds like a perfect thread for the FTA Shack.
If you set your pole at the correct angle, there's not even any complicated mechanics involved.
But I stray too far off topic for this thread.
I'll reserve any clever ideas awaiting your new topic & pictures.
If ya KNOW, then I don't have to remind ya.
Sounds like a perfect thread for the FTA Shack.
If you set your pole at the correct angle, there's not even any complicated mechanics involved.
But I stray too far off topic for this thread.
I'll reserve any clever ideas awaiting your new topic & pictures.
We have delays on this from the factory and the development team. I am embarrassed, but it is outside of my control. As soon as I have a solid date I will report back to you. The good news is, it is a project in progress. If THAT changes, I will also let you know.
It's a pretty cheap feature to add I would think, 1 extra processor pin and some code, 5Vdc should be there, 3 position terminal strip 25 cents in quantity. I guess it depends on the resources of the processor chosen to run it. A lot of companies will layout the board for extra features, then only populate it for the model that uses that feature, IE Vbox 4000 without and Vbox 4000/p with and a price point to cover the overhead of course.
I went and did a bit of boneing up on PWM controlled servos Cadsulfide, thanks for the bump in the right direction. Based on what I was able to get down, cheap may be 'relative'. I guess first it needs to be defined what exactly it will be doing and how. Do we know what freq and duty cycle values 0 and 90 deg rotation points are on these polar rotors units? Shall we need two point only [all the way cw or cww] or proportional between these two points? Of course if we want remote control, [we do dont we?] addl remote functions will require a patch to those V-Box uP routines, along with an add'l set of IR commands to process, shift, or some pre-key sequence or similar would suffice. Some of this needs to be defined before a system can be designed, much less prototyped and mass produced. [33 votes counting maybes.]
You sound like a guy that already knows inexpensive is not necessasarily cost effective.
Looking over some of the stuff I found, a stand alone unit with 8 bit binary input resolution could be perfboarded relatively easily using hardwired logic gates [no uP, no programming] and a couple of fixed duty cycle oscillators. I wouldnt feel uncomfortable building what I came across, but integrating something similar into an existing design could prove to be a task. Integrated remote control would be another matter, but there are stand alone IR/RF tcvr setups out there pretty reasonable. What's one more remote on the coffee table going to hurt right?.....lol
Thanks a bunch again for the spoon feed. It was educational to say the least. I doubt I'll take a poke at building this, but I will prolly build it in one of the circuitmaker sims I have just to see in in action.
Hang in there you hard core CoRotor guys........
You sound like a guy that already knows inexpensive is not necessasarily cost effective.
Looking over some of the stuff I found, a stand alone unit with 8 bit binary input resolution could be perfboarded relatively easily using hardwired logic gates [no uP, no programming] and a couple of fixed duty cycle oscillators. I wouldnt feel uncomfortable building what I came across, but integrating something similar into an existing design could prove to be a task. Integrated remote control would be another matter, but there are stand alone IR/RF tcvr setups out there pretty reasonable. What's one more remote on the coffee table going to hurt right?.....lol
Thanks a bunch again for the spoon feed. It was educational to say the least. I doubt I'll take a poke at building this, but I will prolly build it in one of the circuitmaker sims I have just to see in in action.
Hang in there you hard core CoRotor guys........
I agree with melgarga. Also, I really would like to see more interest in this. So far only 34 maybes. This thread was viewed 66o times.
cup is half . . . ?
Out of 660 visitors, only three said "no" ! -
Yea, true, but look at it this way.
Out of 660 visitors, only three said "no" ! -
Yea, true, but look at it this way.
Out of 660 visitors, only three said "no" ! -
Exactly! Depending on how you look at it.....
34 of 37 voters are probable! That's 92% of potential buyers!
To be, umm, clear, if slightly contradictory - 24 of 34 said *YES*! That's 71% of your 'maybe' group that will buy immediately upon availability.
Well, however you interpret it, you can consider my order solid at this point.
Mel;
I'm a PIC kinda guy.
8 bit resolution for 90 degrees is ~0.35 degrees per bit, should be ok for fine tuning. Micro's are really good at measuring time, so getting the pulse right is easy. No need for a redesigned remote, fine tuning can be an additional menu icon with the left/right buttons for panning the servo. Most code is written as modules so you can "patch" it or add features without too many headaches. For some applications, a few people still write in assembly, but most use high level languages these days. It's mostly if the chosen processor has the resources (code space, I/O, speed) to add the feature.
You're right about it all boiling down to the question; "Is there a big enough market to pay for the development/manufacturing effort?"
Well actually it's 25 definates [up by one] and 10 maybes, still less than I would have guessed. Hopefully not a sign of things to come for C band. You cant really calculate no. of views into the formula, since most everybody interested is checking back, and every time a new post is made it shows up in the new post search, so anyone that checks for new posts will come look at it [again sometimes] to see what has developed. I do every time I log in. I've gotten to where I only search for new FTA posts [thanks for that feature Scott] because I could really care less about the poor pizza pan companies problems, and it makes a shorter list.
A PIC guy, yeah, you struck me as one of those FW writing breadboarder............lol j/k
Menu.....? Icon = GUI? Hmmm. I dont have the V4000, only a VboxII. Maybe there's something I'm missing not knowing the features of the box in question.
Sounds like a really neat project for STBs though. Doubtfull one will ever see the source code for them though.
I have no clue what uP/memory and I/O configuration these things have, but as you pointed out, it may be very basic, not lending easily to enhancement beyond it's original design parameters. The reason I was thinking in a hardware solution mode was the lion's share of the work could be performed ouside of the native 'OS + BIOS' for lack of better terms, with the exception of the ir features, which would require some revisions in the module that handles ir commands. Even the 8 bit input could be run via an up/down binary counter, mode [variable, aka ramp or preset H/V] selected by the remote.
Dang it. I'm going to fool around and talk myself into something here that's going to get me in trouble for slackin' on my honeydos...........lol
A PIC guy, yeah, you struck me as one of those FW writing breadboarder............lol j/k
Menu.....? Icon = GUI? Hmmm. I dont have the V4000, only a VboxII. Maybe there's something I'm missing not knowing the features of the box in question.
Sounds like a really neat project for STBs though. Doubtfull one will ever see the source code for them though.
I have no clue what uP/memory and I/O configuration these things have, but as you pointed out, it may be very basic, not lending easily to enhancement beyond it's original design parameters. The reason I was thinking in a hardware solution mode was the lion's share of the work could be performed ouside of the native 'OS + BIOS' for lack of better terms, with the exception of the ir features, which would require some revisions in the module that handles ir commands. Even the 8 bit input could be run via an up/down binary counter, mode [variable, aka ramp or preset H/V] selected by the remote.
Dang it. I'm going to fool around and talk myself into something here that's going to get me in trouble for slackin' on my honeydos...........lol
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