[WT-support] wtRotators network protocol?

[Bob Wilson, N6TV]

Peter,

First, having a rotator control box that plugs directly into a LAN as an
Ethernet appliance sounds like a great idea; this would greatly simplify
station integration *if* there were a standard protocol, such as the
Win-Test UDP protocol, that all manufacturers could implement.

As you may have already discovered, the UDP protocol used by Win-Test is
documented here:

http://download.win-test.com/utils/SummaryBroadcastingSpecs.txt

Unfortunately, that document is over 2 years old, and it describes protocol
version 1.2 (current version is 1.25).  It does *not* describe the
relatively new rotator frames, which were added in Summer of 2009, about a
year after that document was published.

I think the current protocol document is available to software authors upon
request.  It would be nice if it were published as an open standard that all
rotator manufacturers could adopt.

In the mean time, adopting an existing published RS-232 command set would be
your best bet, even if you don't have any serial ports on your computer.

You could use an Ethernet-to-RS232 device like this one to send commands to
your controller over Ethernet:

http://www.hw-group.com/products/converter/index_en.html

If anyone on this list ever tried using something like this Portbox
Ethernet-to-RS232 box, please describe the results.  Note that this is
ETHERNET, not USB.

73,
Bob, N6TV

On Thu, Oct 7, 2010 at 1:51 AM, Peter Stuge <peter at stuge.se> wrote:

> Hello!
>
> I'm a member of SSRS in southern Sweden, I'm not yet equipped with a
> callsign, but an amateur at heart for many years already. We expect
> to see some activity this weekend :) so it would be nice if I could
> get this thing to work.
>
> I've made my own controller for our Yaesu antenna rotor since we
> don't have a GS-232. I would of course like to hook the controller
> into Win-Test, but even though it would allow me to use wtRotators
> as-is, I am not at all interested in emulating the GS-232 serial
> protocol.
>
> It would be significantly easier, faster and simpler for me if I
> could use another protocol for the controller, and had the
> information needed to write a small program that looks like, and
> speaks like, wtRotators. We are not using wtRotators at all at the
> moment, so there's no risk for conflicts.
>
> In the longer term maybe wtRotators would gain support for my
> controller directly, that would be ideal, but right now my focus is
> on the coming contest and I can certainly whip something up quickly
> enough as long as I know what the UDP messages should look like.
>
> Can someone help me? The wiki has a lot of great information, but
> very little at the level of detail I need to do this. I hope someone
> can fill the gap. It seems that PstRotator and maybe also others
> speak this protocol too.
>
>
> Thanks
>
> //Peter
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