Titanium ASC1 or ASC-1: Read This Before Buying

[MikeB]

The Vbox I can 100% agree on. It's open source and readily available for cheap to nothing to design and program. They work. The code is locked in the MCU by whomever decides to clone them.
Could they be made better? Certainly. Could they have a nice display like the ASC-1? Probably.

The ASC-1? It's a love/hate for me. All I want to do is repair a few. Reverse engineering the circuitry took a bit for the sections that show faults. And the whole design is "eyes only". I will need Brian's assistance after getting the circuitry aced. One, maybe two need microcontrollers. Not so hard to do with the right equipment and skill.
It's a Vbox in essense. With some really cool bells and whistles.
The motor power side is rectified xformer voltage. No regulation to speak of and prone to voltage/current sag. Something that a SMPS would handle most awesome. Plus just sitting in the case it sucks juice and makes heat. Again. something that SMPS supplies do very well in management of idle current.
And in agreement of the millisecond lag dish movement error generation. Try it when your motor grunts trying to get that negative-twenty molasses squishing.
Instead of drooping voltage and current running through X feet of cable. An smps senses it and compensates. Everyone needs a little boost once in awhile.

Vbox. Cheap. They work. No big sting if one takes a crap.
Make your own from a PIC mcu. Bare PC boards are out there.
Adruino. Now. That catches my interest. The diseqc library is freely available. Projects abound. Some are pretty cool.
The Research Concepts commercial dish movers. 1 axis, 2 axis. Ebay has quite a few nice ones for not too bad of a price.
It was mentioned. Reading from the FTA guys who use them. Pretty robust. Although you have to manually punch up a memory store to move your dish.
But they do have pc software and a RS422 interface. Bing!
Once i get the interest of the right Arduino guy I'll get very involved. Diseqc works on a data string. ASC-1, Vbox "listens" for the command to move to a memory location.
The Arduino motor control projects do the same thing.
It's all there for the Arduino. Instead of waiting for a go-to command and actuating relays and counting encoder pulses.
Let the Arduino receive the command. And relay it transcoded to a RS422 string that a RC mover understands. The data packets of diseqc are very similar to RC controller protocols. But different.
A display on the Arduino showing a command was sent from the receiver to move to SES-1, etc. And the RC mover doing it. No more dead Vbox. No more hoping that your ASC-1 wont die of sudden death.
Arduino guys please speak up!

Here you go Arlo, have at it!

https://www.electronicwings.com/users/mehdiadham/projects/1521/satellite-dish-positioner-with-diseqc-and-wifi

[el bandido]

I seriously doubt anyone here will do the linked arduino diseqc 1.2 project because it is too much work. And for what gains?
All I need is the actuator to move precisely to a given satellite when it is selected. Really nothing more than that. I also think it is a good idea to be able to see the current being drawn as the dish moves, and have an amperage meter installed that shows 0.00 or two decimal places.

The only thing I would add for my current dish moving system is the ability to see the motor counts on the tv screen when the motor is called. It would be nice if I could figure out an easy way to do that.