Recently I moved from the legacy Satnogs installation to the docker install by following this command
$ curl -sfL https://satno.gs/install this installed version: “v2.3-compat-xxx-v2.3.5.0” on the Raspbery pi and all worked well. it was a basic setup with no rotator.
Yesterday I read that my K3NG arduino based rotator will not communicate via serial to the RPi , this I believe is an issue with the docker installation.
Is there a work around for this yet ? as I now wish to install the rotator on the Satnogs system
Alternativly , I could install an ethernet shield on the arduino rotator and use the network for communication.
I think I might be possible to attache a serial interface to the container. I did this for USB devices with success. As I do not own a serial rotator I cannot test it. I built a working rotator using an ESP32 modul and some code I wrote. I will directly be fed from the satnos docker container I run. What motors do you have attached to the arduino board? You can have a look at mine here. I can share the code if you are interested. It is not very beautiful so.
Currently I have a K3NG (Arduino) rotator controller configured for Azimuth only , This is connected to the Yaesu G1000DXC.
This works great with PST rotator software and similar. However I wanted to move forward and have the USB from the Rasperry Pi connected to the Arduino rotator (K3NG) effectively having Satnogs controll the rotator. Longterm , I have a partially built SupperAntennaz stepper motor rotator with Nema17 steppers which I may eventually connect to the K3NG via the appropriate stepper driver boards,
The current issue (and I am more than happy to be corrected) is that Satnogs installed via Docker will not communicate with the serial/USB on the Arduino rotator. A possible answer might be to buy an Ethernet Shield for the arduino rotator and communicate via ethernet.
I cannot see any support for ethernet shield in K3NG rotator’s documentation. Therefore I think the easiest way would be to attache a serial console to the docker setup. If you are using a USB2Serial adapter this should be possible as I am running a Noelec NESDR which is USB and as mapped into the container. As far as I understand the Arduino Board is connected to the PC running the docker container. If you plug it and then have a look to dmesg command output in Linux you should see the interface created. I would suggest to try mapping this device inside the container and then use the mapped device name in the rotator configuration. I don’t know for sure if it needs to be mapped into the rigctld container or satnogs container itself. I would just test this.