Arduino, Raspberry Pi & Electronics Latest Topics

raspberry pi controlling my antenna rotator — anyone done this?

Sun, 05 Jul 2026 15:08:41 +0000

so ive been messing around with this for a few weeks now and i think im about 70% of the way there but hitting a wall. basically i have an old Yaesu G-450A rotator and i want to drive it from a raspberry pi 4 instead of the controller box, or at least have the pi read the position and log it automatically during contests.

the position pot in the rotator puts out 0-5v depending on where the antenna is pointing and i thought i could just read that with the pi's GPIO but of course the pi doesnt have an ADC so i ended up grabbing an MCP3008 off amazon and wiring that in. got the SPI talking to it okay and im reading values but theyre really noisy, like bouncing around by 20-30 counts even when the rotator isnt moving. not sure if its a grounding issue or if i need some filtering on the input. tried adding a 0.1uf cap to ground on the input pin and it helped a little but still not great.

the actual motor drive side i havent touched yet, was thinking about using a relay board to trigger the CW and CCW lines but i keep reading about people using H-bridge motor controllers instead. the motor in the G-450A is just a basic AC motor though so i dont think a typical H-bridge is gonna work for that? or am i wrong about that

anyway if anyone has done something similar or has ideas about the ADC noise problem id love to hear it. also open to just using an arduino for the analog side since it has a built in ADC and then talk to the pi over serial, maybe that would be cleaner

using raspberry pi as a packet node / aprs gateway thing — anyone done this?

Sat, 04 Jul 2026 01:09:00 +0000

so ive been messing around with a pi 4 i had sitting in a drawer and i got direwolf running on it last week, got it connected to my kenwood TM-V71A through a cheap sabrent usb audio interface. its actually working as an igate now which is kind of cool but i want to take it further.

the thing is i want to add some automation to it — like have it monitor a few frequencies and maybe trigger some relay outputs based on certain conditions. i was thinking of wiring up an arduino uno to the pi over serial and using the arduino to handle the actual GPIO switching so i dont have to worry about the pi's 3.3v pins doing something dumb to my radio equipment. anyone done something like this or am i overcomplicating it.

also the audio levels going into direwolf are kind of all over the place, not sure if its the soundcard or the cable i made. using a standard 6-pin mini din to 3.5mm setup, nothing fancy.

using a pi zero to automate my shack — anyone else gone down this rabbit hole

Fri, 03 Jul 2026 15:07:12 +0000

so i've been messing around with a raspberry pi zero w for about 3 months now trying to get it to handle some basic shack automation stuff and honestly i dont know if im making this harder than it needs to be or if this is just how it is

the basic idea was to have it monitor my IC-7300's band activity via rigctld, then automatically kick on the amp and switch the antenna relay depending on what band i qsy to. seemed simple enough on paper. i got rigctld talking to the radio fine, python script is reading the frequency, but the GPIO side is where things keep getting weird. the relay board im using is one of those cheap 4-channel jobs off amazon and it seems like whenever the pi is under any load at all the relay timing goes wonky. like it'll fire 200-300ms late sometimes which isnt the end of the world but it means the amp is keying before the antenna is fully switched and i can hear it in the audio

ive tried moving the relay control to a separate thread, tried a small arduino nano as a dedicated relay controller communicating over serial from the pi, that actually helped a lot but now im dealing with occasional serial dropouts and i feel like im just adding complexity to fix complexity

anyone else running a setup like this or am i reinventing the wheel when there's already some smarter way to do it

using arduino to automate my antenna switch — anyone done this before?

Thu, 02 Jul 2026 08:44:56 +0000

so ive been messing around with this idea for a while and finally started putting something together. basically i have 4 antennas on the roof — a 40m dipole, a 6m yagi, a 2m/70cm colinear, and a random wire for the low bands — and im constantly walking back to the shack to flip the manual coax switch every time i want to change bands. its getting old fast.

i picked up an arduino mega a few months back thinking id use it for something eventually and this seems like the perfect project. the plan is to have it read the band output from my IC-7300 (the CI-V bus or maybe just the band voltage from the ACC port, still deciding) and then automatically key the right relay to connect the correct antenna. i already have a 4-relay module from a random aliexpress order sitting in the bin.

the part im not totally sure about is isolation. i dont want RF getting back into the arduino and frying it, and i know relay coils can cause spikes too. been reading about using optocouplers between the control lines and the relay board but the relay module i have might already have them built in, hard to tell from the docs. does anyone have experience with this kind of setup? also curious if a pi would be better than the arduino for this — i feel like the arduino is simpler for something that just needs to flip relays but maybe im missing something.

using arduino to automate my antenna tuner — anyone done this before

Thu, 02 Jul 2026 01:07:42 +0000

so i've been messing around with an arduino mega for a few months now and i finally got to the point where i want to do something actually useful with it for the shack. the idea is pretty simple in my head — read the SWR from my antenna analyzer output, feed that into the arduino, and have it drive a couple of stepper motors to rotate the capacitor and inductor on my homebrew L-network tuner. sounds simple right

the problem im running into is the analog reads are noisy as heck. im using a directional coupler i wound myself on a FT-37-43 core and the voltage divider output feeding into the A0 pin, but even with a 100uf cap across the input and a small RC filter i built i still get like 30-40 points of jitter on the analogRead. tried averaging 50 samples and it helped some but when youre trying to detect a minimum in the SWR curve even small variations mess up the algorithm

anyone dealt with ADC noise on arduino specifically in an RF environment? im wondering if i need to shield the whole thing in a metal box or if theres something in the code side i can do. also considered switching to a Pi Zero with an external ADC over SPI but that feels like overkill for what is basically a PID loop

using arduino to automate antenna switching based on band — worth it?

Wed, 01 Jul 2026 15:09:02 +0000

so ive been messing around with an arduino mega for the past few weeks trying to get it to auto-switch my antenna relays based on what band my radio is on. the radio puts out band data on a DB9 connector (its an icom 7300 so the CI-V bus is an option too but i went the simpler route first) and the idea is to just have the arduino read those lines and then key the right relay to connect whichever antenna is appropriate.

its actually mostly working now but ive hit this weird issue where if i switch bands really fast on the rig the relay sometimes clicks to the wrong position for like half a second before correcting itself. not sure if thats a debounce thing in the code or if the band data lines are just noisy. i added a 50ms delay before acting on the band change and it seems better but feels hacky. anyone else done something like this and found a cleaner way to handle it?

also thinking about eventually tying a raspberry pi into this so i could do logging and maybe run flrig or something, not totally sure what the architecture would look like yet. open to ideas.

using arduino to automate my antenna switch — anyone done this?

Wed, 01 Jul 2026 06:06:32 +0000

so ive been sitting on this idea for a while now and finally starting to actually do something about it. basically i have four antennas out back — a dipole, a vertical, a small loop for 40m, and a two element yagi that i built last summer — and right now im just using a cheap manual coax switch to hop between them which means i have to walk over to the shelf every time i want to change. annoying when youre in the middle of a pile-up.

my plan is to use an arduino mega with some relays to handle switching based on whatever band i select on my rig. the radio is an IC-7300 so i can pull band data off the ACC port, which should make it pretty straightforward to decode and feed into the arduino logic. i found a few sketches online but none of them are exactly what i need and my C++ is pretty rusty honestly.

has anyone actually done something like this or something close? curious if the relay noise is an issue or if i need to go solid state for the RF switching part. the coax relays i was looking at are like the Tohtsu kind, they handle the RF and the arduino just drives the control voltage. seems doable but im probably missing something obvious

using an arduino to control my antenna rotator - anyone done this?

Wed, 01 Jul 2026 02:14:47 +0000

so ive been messing around with this idea for a few weeks now and finally got something working but im not sure its the right approach. basically i have an old prop pitch motor setup for my yagi and the controller that came with it is pretty much dead, just a basic analog pot and some relays. figured why not replace the whole thing with an arduino and a proper feedback loop.

what i ended up doing was using an uno with a motor shield to drive the relays and im reading the az feedback pot with one of the analog pins. works okay but the dead band tuning is driving me nuts - it either overshoots like crazy or hunts forever trying to settle. ive messed with the delay values but i feel like i need an actual PID library or something instead of the dumb bang-bang control im doing now.

also thinking about adding a raspberry pi so i can tie it into hamlib and have rotctld actually talk to it over serial, that way it would show up in my logging software automatically. has anyone done that bridge before, like arduino handles the hardware side and the pi sits in between as the interface layer? seems like the right split but maybe im overcomplicating it.

using an arduino to automate my antenna rotator — worth it or just get a proper controller

Tue, 30 Jun 2026 13:04:15 +0000

so ive been messing around with this idea for a couple weeks now and im not sure if im overcomplicating things. basically i have an old CDE Ham IV rotator thats still mechanically solid but the controller box has seen better days, the pot is flaky and the meter is basically useless. instead of tracking down a replacement controller or paying for one of those aftermarket units i was thinking about just building something around an arduino mega i have sitting in a drawer.

the idea is pretty straightforward, read the pot voltage with the analog input, drive the rotator motor through a relay board, and then talk to the PC over serial so i can feed it into ham radio deluxe or whatever. ive seen a few projects online that do basically this but they all seem to have slightly different approaches and some of the code looks pretty old and probably written for earlier arduino IDE versions.

has anyone actually done this and used it for serious operating, like contesting or satellite work where you really need the heading to be accurate and responsive? im a little worried about the pot noise causing jitter in the position reading and whether simple averaging in software is good enough or if i need to do something more aggressive with filtering. also not sure if the mega is even the right board for this or if something like a pi zero with a proper ADC hat would be more accurate.

any experience here would be appreciated, even if its just "dont bother it was a nightmare"

using arduino to automate my antenna rotator — anyone done this?

Tue, 30 Jun 2026 11:53:59 +0000

so ive been messing around with an old antenna rotator for a few months now and the controller died on me, the original unit was some no-name thing that came with a used yagi i picked up and honestly the controller was already held together with prayers and electrical tape when i got it. anyway instead of buying a replacement i figured this would be a good excuse to finally do something with the pile of arduino uno and mega boards i have sitting in a drawer from various impulse buys on aliexpress.

the basic idea is to use a stepper motor driver board — i have a drv8825 kicking around — and just drive the azimuth motor directly, reading position back from a pot on the rotator shaft. been looking at hamlib and apparently you can interface custom rotators through rotctld which would be great for getting it working with wsjtx for satellite stuff eventually. i have a raspberry pi 4 that could sit in the shack and handle the higher level stuff while the arduino handles the actual motor control loop.

has anyone actually done something like this end to end? im not worried about the electronics side too much but the hamlib integration is where im getting fuzzy. any gotchas with the serial communication between the pi and the arduino that i should know about going in?

using an arduino to automate my antenna switcher — anyone done this?

Tue, 30 Jun 2026 07:55:54 +0000

so ive been messing around with this idea for a while now and finally started putting something together. basically i have 4 antennas — 40m dipole, a vertical for 20/15/10, a loop for 80m, and a random wire i use sometimes for weird stuff — and im tired of manually swapping the coax connections every time i want to change bands. been doing it for like 3 years and honestly its getting old fast.

so i started wiring up an arduino uno with a 4-relay board i grabbed off amazon (the blue ones, you know the kind) and the idea is to tie it into my rig's band data output. my FT-991A puts out band data on the ACC port so in theory the arduino reads that, figures out what band im on, and switches the right relay to connect the correct antenna. sounds simple enough right

the part im stuck on is the logic for reading the band data. its a voltage-coded output i think, different voltages for different bands, and im not sure if i should be using the analog inputs or if theres some cleaner way to handle it. also not sure if i need any buffering between the rig and the arduino, dont want to fry the ACC port on a $900 radio

anyone done something like this? happy to share my code once i get it working, still pretty rough right now

using an arduino to automate antenna switching — anyone done this?

Tue, 30 Jun 2026 06:08:28 +0000

so ive been messing around with this idea for a while now and finally starting to actually put it together. basically i have a hexbeam and a vertical and i'm constantly having to manually flip the coax switch depending on what band im on or what direction i want to point. its not a huge deal but it gets annoying especially during contests when youre trying to move fast.

my plan is to use an arduino uno with a relay board to handle the antenna switching and maybe tie it into some kind of rotator control at some point. i already have a raspberry pi 4 sitting around that i use for wsjtx and js8call, so i figured i could have the pi send serial commands to the arduino to trigger the relays based on whatever band the radio is on. my radio is a ts-590sg so i can poll it via cat for the current frequency and just write a little python script to handle the logic on the pi side.

has anyone actually done something like this or something similar? im not a great programmer but i can fumble through python and arduino sketches well enough. main thing im worried about is rf getting into the arduino and messing things up, ive heard that can be a real problem especially if the relay board is anywhere near the feedlines. any advice on shielding or grounding for that kind of thing would be appreciated. also not sure if i should use opto-isolated relays or just regular ones for this application.

pi zero w as a remote rig controller — anybody done this yet

Tue, 30 Jun 2026 00:15:50 +0000

so ive been messing around with this for a few weeks now and i think im close but not quite there. the idea is pretty simple — use a pi zero w to control my ft-891 remotely over wifi, handle PTT via a gpio pin through a little transistor circuit i cobbled together, and pipe the audio both ways using a usb soundcard i had lying around. got rigctld running on the pi and can hit it from the shack computer no problem, PTT fires fine when i test it manually.

the problem is the audio latency is just... rough. like 400-600ms rough. ive tried messing with the alsa buffer settings and bumped the sample rate down to 8khz to ease the load but it still feels like im talking to someone on the moon. not sure if this is a pi zero limitation (probably is, single core after all) or if im doing something dumb in the audio routing. using mumble as the audio transport btw, seemed like the obvious choice.

anyone gone down this road? wondering if i should just bite the bullet and use a full pi 4 instead, or if theres some mumble config magic im missing. also open to completely different approaches if anyone has one.

using arduino to automate my antenna rotator — anyone done this?

Mon, 29 Jun 2026 16:15:14 +0000

so ive been messing around with an old Yaesu G-450A rotator that i picked up at a hamfest last spring and the controller is functional but kind of a pain to use especially when im trying to track satellites and also do other stuff at the same time. someone at the club mentioned that people have been using arduinos to automate rotators and interface them with software like PstRotator or even just write their own logic and honestly that got me down a rabbit hole for like two weekends straight.

i ended up buying an Arduino Mega (probably overkill but i had a coupon) and a bunch of motor driver modules and ive been reading through other peoples projects online but a lot of them are half documented and you kind of have to guess at the wiring. what i really want is for the thing to be able to receive AZ/EL commands over serial from my computer and then drive the rotator to that position and report back. seems doable but the analog feedback from the rotator pot is giving me weird readings and im not sure if its a voltage divider issue or if my ADC just needs more averaging or what.

anyone done something similar with this specific rotator or honestly any rotator, id love to know what approach worked for you. also curious if anyone has tied this into a Raspberry Pi instead, i have a Pi 4 sitting in a drawer doing nothing and wondered if thats a better approach for the serial interface side of things.

using arduino to automate my rig switching — anyone done this?

Sun, 28 Jun 2026 18:18:03 +0000

so ive been messing around with an arduino mega for the past few weeks trying to get it to handle antenna switching and also trigger PTT on my IC-7300 when i key up on one of my other radios through a digi mode interface. the problem im running into is the timing is just slightly off, like maybe 20-30ms delay before PTT actually fires and on FT8 that window is tight enough that im dropping the first part of my transmission.

ive got a relay board connected to pin 7 and im using a simple digitalWrite with a small capacitor on the relay coil to reduce the back EMF but i dont know if thats actually helping or making things worse honestly. the code is pretty basic, just watching for a voltage change on an analog pin and then triggering the relay. thought about switching to hardware interrupts instead of polling but havent gone down that rabbit hole yet.

anyone done something similar? also thinking about swapping in a raspberry pi 4 so i could run js8call and handle all the switching logic in python but not sure if thats overkill for what im trying to do

using arduino to automate my antenna switch — anyone done this?

Sun, 28 Jun 2026 16:46:36 +0000

so ive been sitting on this idea for a while now and finally starting to poke at it. i have a 4-port coax switch out in the shack and honestly im just tired of walking over to flip it manually every time i change bands. figured an arduino nano with a relay board would do the trick but im not sure if i should just go that route or use a pi zero for the whole thing.

the main thing i want is for the radio to send some kind of signal when it changes bands and have the switch follow it automatically. my ic-7300 has the acc port and i know it spits out band data but i havent really dug into the ci-v stuff yet. anyone tied ci-v reads to gpio pins on an arduino before? feels like this should be a solved problem but i cant find a clean writeup anywhere that isnt for a completely different radio.

also not sure if a nano has enough horsepower for this or if i should just use a pi from the start. dont really need a screen or anything fancy, just reliable switching. open to suggestions

using an arduino to automate my antenna rotator — anyone done this?

Sun, 28 Jun 2026 08:29:38 +0000

so ive been messing around with this for a few weeks now and i think im overcomplicating it honestly. the idea is pretty simple — i want the arduino to read azimuth from my yaesu g-800 rotator controller (tapping the voltage on the pot output like everyone does) and then compare it against a target bearing i set, then drive the rotator relay until it gets close enough. like within 3 or 4 degrees is fine for HF.

i got the analog read part working no problem, voltage divider is set up and im getting sensible numbers out of it. the part thats killing me is the dead band logic. like when do i tell it to stop? i had it overshooting constantly last night and i couldnt figure out if it was the loop speed or just my relay debounce being garbage. tried adding a delay but that felt hacky.

also wondering if i should just scrap the arduino and throw a raspberry pi at this instead. pi has more headroom for eventually adding like a web interface or whatever but feels like overkill for what is basically just a comparator with relays. anyone gone either route and have thoughts?

using arduino to automate my antenna switch — anyone done this?

Sat, 27 Jun 2026 18:54:16 +0000

so ive been messing around with an arduino uno for the past few weeks trying to get it to automatically switch between my two antennas based on band in use. the rig is an IC-7300 so i can pull the CI-V data off the USB port and theoretically know what band im on at any given time. my plan is to have the arduino parse the CI-V frequency data and then trigger a relay to flip between my 40m dipole and the trap vertical for 20/15/10.

got the serial comms working mostly fine, the arduino is receiving the frequency data but im having a weird issue where it seems to miss packets every now and then, like itll switch correctly 8 times out of 10 but then just... not respond. no idea if its a timing issue with how fast CI-V polls or something in my parsing code. im using a simple SoftwareSerial setup which maybe isnt ideal.

also the relay im using is just a generic 5v relay module from amazon, wondering if i should be more careful about what relay i use given the currents involved. the coax switch itself is a MFJ-1700C being driven by the relay so its not like im switching RF directly, just the control voltage for the solenoids.

anyone done anything similar? would love to see some code if youve got it

using arduino to automate my antenna switch, few questions

Sat, 27 Jun 2026 11:41:16 +0000

so ive been messing around with an arduino mega for the past few weeks trying to get it to control my 6-position antenna switch automatically based on what band the radio is on. the radio is an IC-7300 so it puts out band data on the ACC port which is great, at least in theory.

i got the band voltage decode working mostly fine, like i can read the voltages and map them to bands no problem, but where im running into trouble is the relay switching. im using a 12v relay board i grabbed off amazon and the thing is introducing all kinds of noise on receive. like S2-S3 worth of noise on 40m especially. i tried adding some bypass caps on the relay coil but didnt really help much. im wondering if maybe the relay board itself is just garbage or if theres something else going on.

also thinking about adding a raspberry pi in there somewhere to log which antenna was active at what time for the contest logs but that feels like overengineering it at this point. anyone else gone down this rabbit hole

Si5351 VFO with ESP32 - CAT Control Implementation Issues

Sat, 27 Jun 2026 08:10:57 +0000

Building a VFO controller using Si5351 and ESP32 for my IC-718, following the W8TEE design from Arduino Projects for Ham Radio. Got the frequency generation working perfectly, but struggling with implementing proper CAT control over serial. The ESP32 serial handling seems different from standard Arduino - anyone successfully integrated CAT commands with Si5351?

Planning to add band decoder outputs and memory channels next. Current setup: ESP32 DevKit, Si5351a breakout, 2x16 LCD with I2C backpack.

raspberry pi for rotator control - anyone tried this?

Sat, 27 Jun 2026 08:09:31 +0000

been thinking about using a pi to control my antenna rotator instead of the ancient control box thats been acting up lately. found some python libraries that look promising but wondering if anyone has actually done this successfully. my rotator is an old alliance hd-73 and im not sure about the interface requirements

also saw some stuff about using gpio pins but honestly not sure if thats the right approach or if i need some kind of relay board in between

K3NG Arduino Rotator Controller vs Commercial Units - Real World Experience

Sat, 27 Jun 2026 04:09:29 +0000

Stock Yaesu rotor computer interface runs about $600 without cables, and Green Herron is similar price. Decided to try the K3NG Arduino solution instead. Using Arduino UNO R3 ($30) with Seeed Relay Shield ($20), plus proto board and MOSFET - total cost around $68. With Ham Radio Deluxe 5.0, the rotor turns smoothly and stops within +/- 1.0 degrees of target - exactly what I wanted for my setup. Had to adjust data rate to 9600bps for HRD compatibility since it doesn't support the default 115200bps, but now I can double-click anywhere on the planet and have automatic rotor pointing. Anyone else made the switch from commercial controllers? The K3NG firmware emulates Yaesu GS-232A/B and Easycom protocols and can easily interface with commercial rotator control units or serve as complete replacement.

using arduino to automate my antenna switch — anyone done this?

Fri, 26 Jun 2026 18:38:38 +0000

so ive been thinking about this for a while now and i finally started messing around with an arduino uno to control my 6-position antenna switch. the idea is pretty simple i think — use the arduino to read band data from my radio (FT-991A puts out band voltage on the ACC port) and then automatically switch to the right antenna based on whatever band im on

i got the basic relay board working on the bench, just toggling relays on and off with a simple sketch, but im kinda stuck on reading the band voltage reliably. the voltage levels arent always clean and i keep getting false triggers when i transmit. thinking i might need some filtering or maybe an optoisolator in there to keep the RF out of the arduino but honestly not sure where to start with that

anyone done something like this or have a circuit that worked for them? ive seen some stuff online but half of it is for older radios and the pinouts dont match. also wondering if i should just scrap the arduino idea and use a raspberry pi instead since i already have a pi4 sitting here doing nothing — though that feels like overkill for just switching relays

Raspberry Pi 4 WSPR beacon drifting on Si5351 - GPS sync working but frequency unstable

Thu, 25 Jun 2026 13:09:46 +0000

Built a multi-band WSPR beacon using RPi 4, Adafruit Si5351 breakout, and u-blox NEO-6M GPS module. GPS sync is solid, timing is perfect, but I'm seeing significant frequency drift on all bands - roughly 15-20 Hz over a 2-minute transmission cycle.

Currently running the VK3HN Arduino sketch ported to Python with JT65encode library. The Si5351 is running at default 25MHz reference with no TCXO upgrade.

Beacon transmits properly and gets decoded
Frequency starts on-target then drifts high
Temperature doesn't seem to correlate with drift pattern

Has anyone successfully compensated for Si5351 drift in software, or is a TCXO upgrade the only real solution for stable WSPR?

using arduino to auto-tune antenna based on band changes — anyone done this?

Thu, 25 Jun 2026 07:55:56 +0000

so ive been messing around with an arduino mega for the past few weeks trying to build something that'll automatically switch my antenna tuner settings when i change bands on the radio. the idea is pretty simple in theory — read the band data output from my IC-7300 (it puts out CI-V over USB) and then drive some relays to switch in different capacitor/inductor values on a homebrew L-network tuner i built last year.

the CI-V parsing part wasnt too bad, i found a library that handles most of the serial decoding. the part thats killing me is the relay timing. when the radio does a band change theres like a 200-300ms window before it actually starts transmitting and i cant figure out if my relay switching is finishing inside that window or if im occasionally catching the tail end of a transmission on the wrong antenna config. i dont have a scope right now which makes this basically guesswork.

has anyone done something similar or at least messed with CI-V on the 7300? wondering if there's a more reliable way to get a band change event that i can actually sync to rather than just watching the frequency change and inferring the band.