Simple and Inexpensive Azimuth Indicator for Amateur Radio Antennas
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This design uses a GT5 belt and 3D printed toothed pulleys to turn a Hall Effect rotation encoder.
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- Printables
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- Other Gadgets
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- Creative Commons — Attribution — Noncommercial — Share Alike
The controller for my heavy duty antenna rotator stopped working properly, but the rotator itself has a DC motor and is easily controlled manually with just a DC supply and an inexpensive PWM controller for speed ramp up/down. To determine the direction the antennas were pointing, I used 3D printed toothed pulleys together with a GT5 toothed belt to drive a Hall Effect rotation encoder. One pulley turns the encoder and the other pulley is designed to wrap around the mast. The belt connects the two pulleys, and the encoder feeds a voltage proportional to the azimuth angle from the tower to a simple voltmeter in the house.
My need was for pulleys that would be appropriate for a 2 inch diameter mast, and the STL files for the encoder bracket and those pulleys are included here. For mast sizes other than 2 inches I have also included the OpenSCAD files that can be modified as may be needed.
I created a video on YouTube that illustrates in detail what I did and how I did it. The link to the video doesn't seem to embed here properly, but it can be found by searching for "David Gilbert" on YouTube.