so ive been messing around with this idea for a few months now and finally getting serious about it. basically i want to replace the old controller on my Yaesu G-800 rotator with an arduino setup that can take AZ commands from the shack PC over serial. the rotator itself is fine, its the controller thats flaky and honestly i figure i can do better with some custom code anyway.

the plan right now is an arduino mega (have one sitting in a drawer), a motor driver board — probably an L298N or maybe one of the higher current IBT-2 bridge boards since i dont know how much current the motor actually pulls under load — and a 10k pot for position feedback. might throw a small OLED on there too just to see the heading without having to look at the PC.

has anyone actually built something like this for a ham rotator specifically? the rotator interface stuff I've seen online is mostly for small az-el setups for satellite work, but mine just needs azimuth. also not sure what protocol to use on the serial side, ive seen Yaesu GS-232 mentioned a lot and it seems like hamlib supports it natively which would be nice for logging software integration.

raspberry pi might be overkill for this but i have one of those too if it makes sense to use it instead. just not sure i need linux running to spin an antenna around lol

done almost exactly this on a green rotor, not the G-800 but similar enough. the IBT-2 is the right call over the L298N, that thing gets warm just looking at it and rotator motors can spike pretty high when they first start turning, especially if its cold outside and the mast is stiff. GS-232A is the way to go for hamlib, took me maybe an hour to get it talking to WSJT-X for FT8 beaming. the pot feedback is fine but just make sure you filter the ADC reads, i was getting twitchy behavior because RF was getting into the analog line and the arduino kept overcorrecting. a small cap right at the wiper pin helped a lot.

arduino mega is fine for this, pi would definitely be overkill unless you want to run a web interface or something. i did eventually move mine to an esp32 just so i could check the heading from my phone on the other side of the house but thats maybe a later problem

the GS-232 thing is spot on, thats what i use. one thing i'll add — watch out for the pot getting dirty over time if its exposed to any humidity. i had weird heading drift after about a year that drove me crazy for way longer than it should have before i figured out the pot was just grimy. some people use hall effect sensors or a 12-bit encoder instead but honestly the pot is easier to start with just get a decent quality one not the cheapest no-name thing off ebay