Rotator control

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Surrey Amateur Radio Communications

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Jun 22, 2025, 5:19:42 PM6/22/25
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Thank you for this great software.

We have every feature working except for our Yaesu Rotator/controller. It is a Yaesu G5500 rotator with a Fox-Delta ST2 control unit. We have tried every Yaesu/Fox Delta  code in the 6 hundred series plus the generic, LVB, and HamLib codes. We get the pink circle indicating the satellite position and the rotator indicator at the bottom of the Skyroof screen shows green but there is no movement or indication on the Yaesu or Fox Delta display. We are using rotctld.exe -m 6xx -r COM8 -s 9600 as the initialization string.

Any suggestions as to where the issue might lie would be much appreciated.

 

John VE7TI

Alex VE3NEA

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Jun 22, 2025, 5:48:42 PM6/22/25
to SkyRoof
Hi John,

The green Rotator light on the status bar means that  SkyRoof has connected successfully to the running rotctld.exe, so the problem is between rotctld.exe and the rotator. To troubleshoot this, make rotor control work without SkyRoof first: use rotctl.exe, the interactive version of rigtctld.exe, and send commands to the rotator manually. Rotator control uses three
commands, "P", "p" and "S" (set position, read position, stop rotation). Once you make rotctl work with the rotator, run rotctld with the same command line parameters.

Vernon Draper

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Aug 11, 2025, 3:36:26 PM8/11/25
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Forum buds,
Any additional pointers?  I have the same issue.
Within rotctl.exe, the 'p' command reports the position properly.
The  'P' allows me t set an AZ and an EL  but upon enter, nothing happens

I also have a FoxDelta ST2 which should be an '-m 608' but it and other Yaesu codes are  giving the same result.

Vernon
KD9SZA



James Hall

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Aug 11, 2025, 5:02:34 PM8/11/25
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Sent from my iPad

Begin forwarded message:

From: "Dr. James Hall" <hear...@nwtcc.com>
Date: August 11, 2025 at 3:14:58 PM CDT
To: Vernon Draper <vernon...@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: Rotator control



Hi Vernon:

I use a Fox Delta ST2 USB controller with my G-5500 and the control protocol I've used successfully (in SatPC32) was Easycomm 1. That would be -m 201.

73, Jamie
WB4YDL

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