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Message: <blockquote data-quote="ArloG" data-source="post: 1164444" data-attributes="member: 418555">Don't try to over analyze the how's and why's. I mean. My first try was using an ancient Houston Tracker hall sensor from a rebadged Saginaw Gear or Venture actuator. I dont know. That old.Then trying to figure out how to safely simulate contact closure for my dish mover that only had a sensor input for a reed switch.With no schematic for either the ASC1 or the Houston Tracker dish mover that had sat unused for years.Then figuring out that the HT mover hall sensor was a PNP output. Making voltage to send to the sensor inputs. With no voltage present on the back panel terminals for - sens. or + sens.  First thing to come to mind. SSR. I've got a box of them waiting to be extracted from the boards they are soldered to. If I screwed up the input of the SSR. Nothing would become of the output. Safe. Safe is good. So is knowing the interface boards with 6 SSR's function. I was an industrial automation tech. svcs manager for a long long time. Meaning lightning rods to sewer pipes. Why does a dog lick itsefl? Yeah. Because it can!The hall sensor with reed switch magnet didn't pan out so well. Lost counts. Dish mover resync constantly. On the 'scope, one pole of the 6 sectors on the magnet showing a Significantly wider flux and one with a short one. Imagine the waveform.My high res encoder wheel. Those miniature neodymium magnets from Amazon don't all have the same strength. Found that out the hard way.And the ones that are equally strong have a flux that overlapped even on the biggest wheel I could fit in the gearbox. 43mm.The smaller one was a total disaster. Mu-metal. Scrap old transformers, hard drives. Make a shield. Try another one. No go.The weak ones. Used a magnetic compass and tried a stack of magnets to find enough that would deflect it at a measured distance from it equally.Wait. Thinking. My machines used optical sensors to track high speed production. A guy in another city replaced a string of Honeywell cube emitter and detector sensor pairs. The the durned machine ran erratically. The supplier sent regular photodiode receivers instead of the correct Schmitt trigger ones. Analogy would be watching the sun go down as opposed to a camera shutter sequencing in front of your eyes. We aced it!My Hall/magnet sensor "trip" was hindered by many things. If a trigger wheel could be made with a few magnets as opposed to the high res. one I really wanted. With a max. of the 43mm that would fit inside of the gearcase. It would work.Optical don't care (like my relaxed, country, American English?). And the modification is safe. There is no hacking and soldering in the guts of the mover needed. And it's documented. I'd like to know why you're told to simply solder a wire from here to there, cut a trace or three. And there you have it.Imagine designing and building a circuit for a potentiometer input only dish mover. There are a ton on eBay.How would you do that?Detect pulses. Count and retain them in memory.Up and down.Convert them to a/d. Convert that to a resistance that can be read by the mover.And don't forget. Retain it all if power is removed.Then figure out how to fit a multi-turn pot into a gearcase with reduction  gearing. I'll pass.My West and East limit is set by the switches. The mover is set to software limit at about -450. The other being + 4700. And 127W is my "home" sat at 0000 for resync. So from 131W-40.5W the counter goes to around 4500. Not too shab.Enough to make you 'dangerous' now?</blockquote>

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