The development of the Azimuth/Elevation (Az/El) Satellite tracking rotor system has been ongoing since we showed off the proof of concept device at Dayton last year.  It was mostly a ‘smoke-and-mirrors’ display but it got the idea out for comment with other Hams.  After returning from Dayton 2015 we started on the design and testing of possible solutions to meet the design goal of providing a simple to use, full featured 12 volt portable Az/El Rotor system.

So, after man-many hours of hardware and firmware development time, we have a design that meets our goal as mentioned above.  A few details on the design requirements that that we reached that make this product unique are listed below:

• Low power 12 Volt operation in a small compact design
• Complete product, no additional parts needed to connect to your computer/tracking application (other than stand/tripod and your favorite antennas)
• Fully Digital System , no analog other than input power voltage
• Built in USB interface
• Resolution of 1 degree in both Az and El axis
• A single 4-conductor cable interconnect between the hand held controller and Motor unit.
• Supports the same operational features plus some new ones as developed for the single axis product
• Same sized compact hand held controller enclosure.

We are about 8 Weeks away from Dayton 2016, most of the parts are in house and per-assembly is in process, but we are waiting on some long lead-time parts to show up.