Spid Rak rotor control issues

[ea3geo]

Hi all,

I'm writing this post after fighting for many days with this.

I'm an owner of a couple of RRC's, an RRC-Micro, an RC1216H and a webswitch. I find these devices to be very well resolved solutions.

I have recently replaced my old PST to a new Spid Big Rak rotator and I don't succeed on having it controlled through the RRC's system.

The highlights so far are:

-In the past, I had successful control of the PST rotor through the COM1 port of the RRC radio side.

-Now, I only have control of the new Spid Rak if direct connected through a local computer (direct connection from the controller to the computer COM1 serial port). No way through the RRC.

-As explained, I also own an RC1216H (I'm controlling an SteppIR 3L antenna through it). One of the tests I checked was to remotely control the Spid Rak controller through the RC1216H: With success! It's actually working through the RC1216H!

-I've tried the old PST cable and I've tried the new "standard RS232 cable" that it's delivered with the Spid Rak. No way.

-As far as I understand it, it seems that Spid Rak is finally controlled at 1200 bps. This final speed handling is done by the rotor program. I have tried to program the COM1 parameters to both 9600 bps (as usual) or 1200 bps. No result. 9600-n-8-1-0 with RTS/CTS set to "no".

-I even tried a different RRC unit at the radio side to discard unit problems. No, it was not the unit.

So, it seems it's something about the configuration or maybe about the cable from the RRC radio side to the Spid Rak controller.

What do you think DR OM's?

Tks & 73 from EA3GEO, Daniel

PS: The controller for the Spid Rak is a ROT 1 PROG, RS232 version.

[sm2o]

Hi

The connector of the Radio-RRC com1 are different configured compared to the RC-1216H, It's a female and pin 2 and 3 are shifted.

setup com1 to mode 1 (char by char) and 1200 n-8-1, RTS/CTS is not needed, then it should work if the cable is correct

73 de mike

[ea3geo]

Hi Mike. Thank you very much for your reply.

I've make the try and this doesn't work. So it might be the cable.

So, the standard cable that came with the rotor works right with the RC1216H and it doesn't with the RRC. And the old home-made cable I had for the Pro.Sis.Tel rotor doesn't work either.

The old cable I had for the Pro.Sis.Tel is quite simple: Tx to Rx, Rx to Tx and GND with GND. That's all.

Should this work?
If not, could you please explain to me how this cable should be?

Thank you very much. Your help is highly appreciated!

73 from EA3GEO, Daniel

[sm2o]

yes

a cable

2---3
3---2
5---5

should be ok

/mike

[ea3geo]

In this case, I'm lost. This is the cable I have.

What's going on? I could think of cold weldings in the connectors. But this cable was working smoothly with the Pro.Sis.Tel.

What could I do? How to follow?

Anybody out there with an Spid Rak???

Tks & 73!

[ea3geo]

Hi there,

Seems I have found a way to have this working properly.

As rotator control, I use the HRD Rotator. This program has a label "Logfile" where you can see the actual port traffic. I observed that it was with continuous timeouts. I thought that maybe the program was expecting an answer from the client within a given time going to timeout if this was not received.

I saw the "Mode-3, char-timeout" in the COM1 mode settings and I did the try and this is actually working well now.

So I've got now Mode-3 in both the control and the radio side and this works.

Anybody knows if this Mode-3 mode gives a longer time for the timeout? Or maybe this mode cancels the timeout? Or maybe this has nothing to do with the problem?

In any case, this is working well now.

Tks & 73 from Daniel, EA3GEO