2025 Tracking Antenna Mech Plans & Changes

Mounting

  • larger base plate so Gemini board is not over hanging. The question is, how much larger does it need to be?

    • New board will have a 30.5 x 30.5 mounting pattern if not already

  • antenna wires aren’t long enough to connect to Gemini easily. Easiest solution to this is to get longer wires.

  • stand-offs for GPS and compass → get it away from aluminum

Notes from Roni (EFS co-op) - refer to Discord - Group Chat That’s All Fun & Games

  • Positional servo that has a hard positional limit instead of continuous rotating would be great. Winch servos that were used are positional but start to rotate forever and lose their position when outside of the recommended pwm range. Servos that know their position even if rotated by hand would be great if that's possible? Maybe that is a standard for all servos but wanted to mention.

  • Compass and GPS should be as far as possible from circuitry and ferrous metals, other tracking antennas do seem to be okay with using metal in their builds but if we could install those sensors on a non metal pole maybe?

  • Prefer having the compass and GPS mounted in a way so that they are not affected by the pitch movement of the antenna, instead sitting flat.

  • Tripod structure is good so that we can make the tracking antenna base (as well as compass etc) mostly flat even on uneven ground

To-do list:

  • Larger baseplate that follows 30.5mm x 30.5mm mounting pattern

    • ensures other tracking antenna components can still mount, such as the L brackets

      • some questions… are the dimensions of the gemini board gonna change @Daniel Puratich ? Afaik Gemini needs some debugging, would this affect dimensions? (I think prob not but worth asking)

  • Mount for GPS and compass - isolated from aluminum

  • Positional servo

    • when would a winch servo be outside the recommended PWM range (@Smile Khatri doesn’t know much about servo yet)

    • can this issue be fixed w software? If not we buy new hardware