[Moon] SPID - answer from producer

[Staszek SP6GWB]

Answer from SPID producer, Jacek Bielecki via SP6GWB.

73's de Stan SP6GWB
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Greetings to all the SPID products users!

Thanks to Staszek's SP6GWB help, I've received your feedback on our rotors.

I've read it carefully and I'm trdyint to draw conclusions on what is 
problematic to you and what should be fixed. I 've been getting some 
additional info on this topic from my dealers, too.

Just to give a brief introduction - we've been selling rotors for 10 
years now, with a few thousand of sets sold. Our product is intended to 
be a compromise - a good product at affordable price. Unfortunatelly, 
this approach makes it impossible for our rotors to be perfect. However, 
we've been doing all we can to upgrade, fix and develop our product.

Here's a list of software upgrades:

1. A better software based filter (processor software) - anti shake 
system (50 ms)
2. Not allowing to immediately change the direction of rotor's rotation 
(which was causing problems). At the moment you can change the direction 
with a 600 ms delay (at the same time, the impulses are being counted)
3. If we spot any other bugs, we fix them as fast as we can.

Within the last year, we also modifed materials (metalized PBC), added 
an additional anti shake filter (RC-100 ms). Next version will also have 
a 50 ms filter to avoid any further problems.

Our driver  has an EMC filter and ferrites on cables.

So, if all the rules of using the rotor and the driver are obeyed, 
everything should work without problems.

These rules are:

1. Voltage on circuit 1,5x Umax ( MOTOR, 12v DC ) = 16 -18 V

A long-lasting overheating of the rotor with 24 VDC voltage will likely 
damage the rotor.

2. Using a power supply adaptor with appropriate voltage.

For higher voltage (i.e. 24 V), rotor will use more electricity (even up 
to 20A), which causes the voltage to go down. Processor takes it as 
turning the power supply off, stops counting impulses and starts writing 
the data to EEPROM.

It's not good to do writing to EEPROM at once because EEPROM has only 
300 000 writing cycles and under such circumstances it will stop working 
in a couple of months.

3. The anti shake (oscillations) fiters are "fixed", "permanent", so 
it's impossible to change the speed of rotor without consequences. And 
if the time gap between impulses is short, the filters will treat is as 
a disturbance and the driver will start losing impulses. It happens it 
we use voltage higher than 20 V DC.

This solution is a compromise - if filters had smaller values, they 
would collect random data.

1. There have been many post on other drivers on this forum. I've looked 
through them and came to the conclusion that if they were used like my 
driver (changing 12-24 voltage, no EMC filters, no ferrite filters), 
they would work in a similar way. Unfortunatelly, with a large scale of 
itmes sold (thousands) and in the long term, all the problems are 
vividly visible. 

2. The counting scheme is not perfect, but it's only because it was 
build to be simple and cheap. Kontraktron and magnet cost 3 euro; a much 
better soultion (with impulse-rotating converter) adds up to 50-60 euro 
for one piece.

3. We use DC engines in rotators, which may couse some disturbance 
(clutter) on higher frequencies. To avoid such problems, we use ferrite 
filters on cables. If this does not help, we recommend checking the 
grounding of your aerial mast and applying some RLC filters as close to 
the engine as possible. Such fliters are used in washing mashines or 
vacuum cleaners.

Your satisfaction is very important to us. We are doing our best to fix 
and upgrade our product. Looking at your posts, I think we are moving in 
good direction:)

Jacek Bielecki