I am not seeing any info for the encoders. are they obsolete now or am I missing something?
SatNOGS rotator V3 (or V3.1) have two versions, one that use geared DC motor and one that use stepper motor. The DC motor does need incremental encoder to count how many degree the motor have turned but for the stepper version it simply count the steps.
In my experience, using stepper in open loop is enough as long as the stepper has enough current so the motor doesn’t stall which then would lose its positioning due to missing step. Having an absolute (not incremental) encoder would be great as the rotator would always know its position every time, but then if the rotator somehow miss its positioning, you simply reset it and it will do the routine zeroing every time it is powered on.
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And that would be nice to have especially for tracking stats, what are the specs I’m looking for though. Like I said I don’t see it listed in the parts list.
Ah, so you are about to make a SatNOGS rotator but a bit confused about using the encoder?
Unfortunately I can’t directly answer to your questions because AFAIK nobody had built the two versions of these and compared it 1:1 on the performance.
But, like I said above, encoders are needed if you are using DC motor version only. I can’t tell about using DC motors as I’m using stepper version but from what I saw, using stepper is more simpler at the cost of using open loop system while DC is more complex with the need of encoder but with more torque.
The documentation can be seen over here and it’s for version 3.1 even though the first picture and title is version 3. The main difference is the version 3.1 have beefier 3D printed parts and the top/bottom box have same width (unlike the version 3 seen in the first image of the documentation).
If you still has any questions, feel free to ask. I’m not the original maker but I’ll help you as far as I know 
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