We’re happy to announce that we’ve now published the pre-launch page for the Discovery Drive, an affordable automatic antenna rotator designed for the Discovery Dish and similarly sized antennas like Wi-Fi grid and Yagi antennas.

Please sign up to be notified of when the crowdfunding page goes live, since the price will be reduced by at least $100 USD during the campaign.

A motorized rotator allows you to use a satellite dish or directional antenna to track and receive signals from polar orbiting satellites, which move quickly across the sky. It also lets you switch swiftly between geostationary satellites without manually realigning the dish.

Examples of polar-orbiting weather satellites that you can track include NOAA POES, METEOR-M2, METOP, and FENGYUN. Depending on your location, you may also have access to other interesting satellites that dump data over specific regions. Amateur radio operators can also use Discovery Drive to track amateur radio satellites with Yagi antennas.

Discovery Dish is designed to be easy to set up and use. Unlike many other rotators on the market, no external controllers are required. Discovery Drive has a built-in ESP32 controller and control can be commanded over WiFi or serial from rotctl-compatible software such as SatDump, GPredict, and Look4Sat on Android.

Features and Specifications

• Up to 125 kgcm (12.25 Nm) of torque
• ESP32 control board
• ± 1.5° of accuracy
• -360° to +360° Azimuth range, 0° - 90° elevation range
• 1.5 RPM Azimuth speed, 0.25 RPM elevation speed
• 12 V power input (either barrel jack or USB Type-C Power Delivery)
• Wi-Fi connectivity with browser-based web UI
• Serial over USB data connectivity or Wi-Fi data connectivity
• Low power draw (< 10 W, can be powered with PoE+ supplies and still have power left over for a single board computer and RTL-SDR)
• Robust, worm gear-locked output drives
• Direct rotctl compatibility over Wi-Fi (compatible with programs that implement the rotctl protocol, such as SatDump, GPredict, and Look4Sat on Android)
• Hamlib compatibility (EasyComm II protocol)
• Waterproof outdoor enclosure
• Open source ESP32 firmware

Discovery Dish Feeds Back in Stock

Also, we wanted to announce that Batch #2 of the Discovery Dish feeds is now in stock at Crowd Supply, so no more waiting around if you would like a new feed! These came in during the tariff war pause, so pricing remains unaffected for now.

Please support our campaign and help us bring the Discovery Drive to life!