so ive been sitting on this idea for a while and finally starting to actually do something about it. basically i want to use a raspberry pi zero w to control my antenna rotator instead of the old manual controller box. the rotator is a cheap yaesu g-450a and the controller just has the usual azimuth pot and motor drive stuff inside, nothing fancy.

my plan is to tap into the controller internals, run the pot wiper into an ADC (was thinking MCP3008 over SPI) to read current position, and then drive the motor via a relay board or maybe an L298N h-bridge if i can figure out the current requirements. the pi would serve up a little web interface so i can point the antenna from my phone or tie it into whatever logging software im running.

has anyone actually done something like this or am i reinventing the wheel here. i know there are commercial solutions but honestly half the fun is building it myself. main thing im not sure about is whether the L298N can handle the rotator motor or if i need something beefier. havent measured the stall current yet which i probably should do first.

yeah done almost exactly this with a G-800 a couple years back. the MCP3008 idea is solid, works great for reading the pot. one thing i'd say is measure that stall current before you commit to anything - rotator motors can pull way more than you'd expect when they hit a stop and the G-450 motor is not tiny. i ended up frying an L298N because i underestimated it. went with a BTS7960 module after that and havent had issues since, those things are rated for 43A peak which is overkill but at least you dont have to worry.

also look up the hamlib rotctld protocol if you havent already, you can basically have your pi pretend to be a network rotator and then any logging software that speaks hamlib just works. saved me a ton of time not having to write custom integration code for everything.

i did something similar but went with an arduino mega instead of the pi just because i had one sitting around. pi is probably better if you want the web interface stuff without too much hassle though. one thing to watch out for is RF getting into the pi's GPIO through the wiring if your antenna is anywhere near the control cable run - had weird glitches on 40m until i added some ferrite on the lines going to the rotator controller. probably obvious but took me way too long to figure out what was happening lol