greenctld/README-upstream.md

2.1 KiB

greenctld

A hamlib-compatible driver for the Green Heron Engineering RT-21 Digital Rotor Controller. hamlib does not support the rotor, but this program can be used as a drop-in replacement for rotctld when commanding the RT-21.

The RT-21 is unlike most of the other rotors hamlib supports in that it uses two serial ports, one for controlling azimuth and one for controlling elevation. The two serial ports are passed via the --az-device and --el-device command line arguments.

The TCP network protocol is compatible with the hamlib protocol documented in the rotctld(8) man page. This driver only implements a subset of that protocol, which includes the subset that gpredict uses. At Astro Digital, this driver has been used extensively with gpredict. For debugging the network protocol, the --dummy option can be used to simulate a rotor without connecting to a real serial port.

Like rotctld, this program does not daemonize on its own. It also produces copious debugging output to stdout.

Usage

  • --az-device <serial-port>, the serial port to use for azimuth

  • --el-device <serial-port>, the serial port to use for elevation

  • --speed <baud>, the serial baud rate to use, defaults to 4800

  • --timeout <seconds>, the serial port timeout, defaults to 1.5

  • --port <port>, the TCP port to listen for connections on, defaults to 4533, the same as rotctld

  • --get-pos, to query the serial ports for the current az/el, and immediately exit. Useful for testing the serial port configuration.

  • --dummy, to speak the TCP network protocol only without connecting to a serial port, useful for debugging gpredict integration.

License

Copyright (c) 2017 Astro Digital, Inc

Released under the terms of the Simplified BSD License; see the LICENSE file for details.

Author

Michael Toren <mct@toren.net>