1st December 2025
Antenna Rotator
Builf

In order to automate the tracking and reception of satellites I decided to build an antenna rotator, combining jbryrn’s AZEL rotator with t0nito’s 1.7Ghz HRPT Helicone Antenna. Most of the components were 3D printed from their designs, with the servos and other parts being recycled from an old Ender3 printer.

For the brain; a Raspberry pi 3a with a Waveshare Stepper Motor HAT (B) manages both the power and controls the rotator’s servos. A python script establishes a local HTTP server; that can be connected to using the software Sat Dump to remotely control of the rotator.

This allows satellite tracks to be scheduled based on TLE (two-line element set) data, with the management of both the frequency and the processing of the received signal to be automated.

Having built and tested that rotator works, the next steps are to try receiving signals and track satellites simultaneously.

VictorX-RayJuliet

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Victor
X-Ray
Juliet

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