Building a DIY AZ/EL Antenna Rotator for Satellite Tracking

Over on his YouTube channel Tysonpower a.k.a Manuel has uploaded a video showing a demonstration of his home made antenna rotator. Manuel has also created a blog post about his antenna rotator, which includes a full parts list and a link to all the files.

An antenna rotator can be used to automatically point a high gain directional antenna such as a Yagi at a low earth orbit satellite which passes overhead relatively quickly. Such as antenna can be easily connected to an SDR like the RTL-SDR to receive data such as HRPT weather satellite images from satellites.

Manuel's antenna tracker is inspired by the SatNOGs rotator, but he writes that his one was designed to slightly to be smaller and more powerful. For the driving motors he uses NEMA23 steppers which are mounted in a frame made out of 2020 aluminum extrusions. An Arduino Nano with optical end stops controls two TB6600 stepper drivers which control the motors. The rest of the parts such as brackets and gears are all 3D printed.

Attached to the antenna rotator is Manuel's home made carbon Yagi antenna. He also attempted to use his 1.2m dish but found that the rotator could not handle the weight.