I guess this is because you are telling rotctl that the Arduino connected to COM7 is an EasycommI compatible rotator.
Actually, the rotator is not the Arduino itself but a device connected to it.
Possible stepper board failure?
What I’m getting when running the command in Powershell
I’ve got 2 months into this project, The laptop is relatively new enough that at this point, I’m thinking about returning it to factory status and trying again from scratch. I only have a couple things I would need to download to get back up and running. The command paths seem to be an issue for some reason here. Granted I have triple checked that the command lines up exactly with the folders that the files are in. I’m having issues with other programs completely unrelated to the rotctld.
powershell is not the same as ye olde cmd.
if you have a path with spaces, it will quote it for you and add a & before the command.
Example:
PS C:\Users\sa2kng> & ".\Downloads\hamlib-w64-4.5.5\test spaces\bin\rotctl.exe" -l
and -s is not the same as -S
Howdy -
Item #1 - Just to be clear, rotctl is the interactive version of the hamlib appliance which allows you to enter commands at the prompt - use this for development, testing, etc, of your hardware; rotctld is the “daemon” version which runs between gpredict and the rotator hardware - it doesn’t take commands from you at the command line. Usually.
The command line options are slightly different for both versions - so be careful there - and I’ve noted that the online reference on Sourceforge - link here are not 100% error free.
That’s what trial and error are for!
Item #2 - The “-m 201” option is used for the “dummy” rotator - and it doesn’t give me any feedback… I use “-m 202” for my Easycomm-compatible hardware.
Item #3 - Here’s a version of the command line for rotctl that works for me in Powershell:
C:> rotctl.exe -m 202 -r com11 -s 9600 -C rts_state=ON,dtr_state=ON
Rotator command: p
Azimuth: 250.10
Elevation: 2.20
Rotator command:
That’s it. Setting the RTS/DTR was required for the USB interface from Windows for me… You can see I started rotctl.exe (just start the command with “rotctl.exe” - that’s all you need - no quotes), and then I entered the ‘p’ (“get position”) command at the prompt to get a position report back from the hardware.
To see a list of commands supported by Hamlib for this rotor, I would hit “?”
Hope this helps - good luck with the project.
Just a correction or two for anyone that has already read my previous post -
The “-m 201” option is an earlier model of the EasyComm protocol - not the dummy rotor as I posted previously… The correct model code for the dummy rotor is “-m 1”. To see a list of all supported rotor types, invoke rigctl / rigctld with the -m1 option (no other options needed). The dummy rotor even responds with fake AZ / EL reports !
Sorry for any added confusion…
73 -
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Thank you for the Info, I’ll have to look in to it when I can pick it back up, It’s been a rough couple weeks.