Remote Dish

From Bob's Basement

Project Leader: Blue

Status: Construction underway (slowly)

Brief: Quite simple and easy hack that absolutley anyone should be able to undertake. In it's most basic form, it simply consists of a Tripod, a servo or a antenna rotator, some form of RC control and obviously a hacked sky dish. The main purpose of it, is to have an auto panning dish which will negate the need for someone to turn the dish.

Uses

The plan is for the dish to be used whilst in a static location, say for example in the middle of a park looking for wifi. It could also be used whilst war sitting (the process of sitting in your house looking for your neighbours wifi)

Components

Satellite TV dish (sky mini dish)
Servo or Rotator
RC Servo or rotator controller
RC Controller
Power Supply
Support Base (Homebrewed from PVC pipes, Concrete or some other form of heavy ballast for support)

Wish list

Some form of automation, ie a macro that will pan it at a very slow rate to enable detection of slow beaconing access points some RC controllers allow for the inclusion of a pic chip

Miniaturisation of components so there is no visible components over than the dish itself

A pan/tilt motor so it can be used to look up and down hills and other obstacles, and for radio hams maybe as to use with AMSAT's and other radio type activities

Some form of automated tracking for following GEO sats without the need to keep running to the dish (no need for LEO as position is static)

Questions, Comments, Abuse to blue[at]--bobsbasement--.co.uk removing the -- (to prevent spam)