This started as a trade school project inspired by the work on my company and ended up being my first PCB with an integrated microcontroller. It consists of a device that pinpoints the location of TV satellites, telling you through the LEDs where you should aim in the sky.

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The LED ring has two lights: the yellow one points to the north, the second one, with a different color depending on the selected satellite,  shows you the position of the satellite. The other two LEDs in the middle show if you have to aim upwards or downwards. The device is easily calibrated by just spinning it.

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The device uses the compass IC QMC5883l, which is just the same as the old HMC5883l but made by another company, and some internal addresses changed, rendering some old programs based on the HMC5883l useless. For the elevation, the accelerometer MPU6500 is used.

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Just like real compasses, the Azimut (horizontal angle) only measures right while held parallel to the floor.

The application of the device is thought to adjust TV-dishes easily without more expensive, professional devices. Unfortunately, the low-cost QMC5883l is quite sensitive to magnetism and metallic objects, giving false measurements while being held near a dish.

The memory space of the ATmega is also quite small, unable to add many satellites on the internal list. On a future version, I would like to read the coordinates of the satellites from an external SD card.

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Click here for the full schematic.

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Credits and many thanks to Santiago Zuazu Quintas for helping to design the first prototype layout and assembling it.