Automating Antenna Rotator Control with Cloudlog and Tampermonkey
I've recently built a Remote Control for the Hy-Gain AR-500X Antenna Rotator which works nicely but requires me to look up the desired heading for a specific station in Cloudlog, go to the remote control web application, determine the best memory channel and then click it to move the rotator.
Determined to streamline this process, I embarked on a journey to automate antenna control with the help of Cloudlog and a little scripting magic.
Disclaimer: I've never heard of Tampermonkey before and I am also not the biggest fan of JS. The resulting work might offend people with more knowledge.
The Solution
Inspired by the potential of automation, I decided to leverage the power of Tampermonkey, a popular userscript manager, to enhance the functionality of Cloudlog. My goal was simple: to add a clickable link below the gridsqaure field in the QSO entry window that would automate the process of adjusting my antenna rotator based on the direction of my QSO partner.
How It Works
The magic lies in the custom JavaScript injected into the Cloudlog webpage by the Tampermonkey script. With this script in place, whenever I log a new QSO in Cloudlog, the heading info below the gridsquare field is converted into a clickable link. Upon clicking this link, the script reads the heading info provided by Cloudlog (via QRZ.com) and sends a GET request to the remote control system for my antenna rotator.
The remote control system receives the GET request, extracts the desired heading, and selects the nearest memory channel to adjust the antenna accordingly.
The Script
You can find the script here.