Trying (& Failing) To Hack A Winegard Satellite Antenna

This is another partial teardown and attempt to interface with a Winegard satellite dish. This one is a Carryout G2+ model, slightly different than the Dish Playmaker we messed with before. It's also a bit different from the Tailgater and VuQube models we've messed with in the past.

While I wasn't able to connect to the Wintegard over USB or serial port, it does have some possibilities for re-use. The stepper motors could be controlled with a Raspberry Pi, and the receiver could be replaced with an RTL-SDR. That means we could do more scan projects like our mini radiotelescope in a prior video.

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[tekvax]

use an oscilloscope to see which pins look like serial data. they could either be RS-232, RS-232TTL, or even RS-422. The blue rj45 to DB-9 is a Cisco console cable, they have a different pinout to the IBM console cables.

[canis_machina]

I gotta be honest, buddy. I never had any interest in radio equipment before. Even though I used a broad variety of Harris radio equipment in the Marine Corps, I only thought of them as tools, never a hobby.

But watching your videos, especially the one where you break down how the ISS sends images through radio, has made me really enjoy messing around with radio equipment myself. I am currently waiting for my General operators license to be finalized. I passed the test with a 95% :)

[markbrown]

Even though you didn't get the results you wanted, I still really enjoyed seeing your process.

[sidflores]

Would love to see a video on the process of bypassing the brain and manually replacing it with a raspberry pie!

[SteveF]

Also try sniffing the USB traffic for clues. Wireshark can do it via USBPcap, there's also USBTrace, SniffUSB and others. Also there's a custom power inverter/injector for this unit that has DIP switch settings on it which may indicate commands sent across the coax somehow.

[VicVektr]

@4:46 common cost cutting measures for electronics is to make one board that does everything and depopulate areas or dont enable certain things. So the GPS and stuff was probably for the more expensive units

[ForwardBias]

I've just been binge watching a bunch of your videos and have really been enjoying it! Being able to take things like this apart and poke around with them just seems so cool! Hoping you're able to get something working over serial to control this, that would be insanely cool!

[Mountainmonths]

I'm definitely more interested in seeing this hacked than replaced with a pi

[clipsoutofdaworld]

Dude I just started watching your videos and your videos are the bomb like I just started with all the radio and satellites and if not for you I wouldn't even know about them. Thank you!

[whitelion]

I just love the look of this and it screams to be hacked. Don't give up. Greetings from the kingdom of Eswatini

[atsleeprepeat]

Hey bro

As others have suggested - using the USART is a good idea, you need to buy a FTDI USB to Serial convertor, Arduinos have them pre built into them for example. Now just a word of caution, they have very bad driver support for Linux. I couldnt get mine to run on Linux lol. They work fine on windows. Now using the USART, you can do anything from serial communication, terminal to even using it to flash new firmware, or read the EEPROM. You will need to see the microcontroller you have there, what all it supports and the rest. Now this in my opinion, is too complicated because we arent here to reverse engineer their embedded system. A much better option is, figure out the pin out of the steppers, find a compatible driver for the steppers, a power supply and use an arduino (uno/nano) and connect everything together. I would recommend against using a pi because pi is not an embedded system, its a microprocessor. We need a microcontroller here. Its a bit more robust when it comes to doing purely hardware stuff. Plus the drivers and current needed to run steppers is much higher than the pi safe limits. If there is a short or a surge, it will fry your pi. Arduinos are a dime a dozen (figuratively), a few pins on the IC might die but thats all.

If i was doing this, i would take out all the electronics they have, switch it out for arduino or some microcontroller i can easily use, with enough power. Next i would add sensors like magnetometers, altimeters, even a gps, to the setup. Maybe change the antenna to something my hardware is more compatible with. Then make presets for the dish, for example - varying area scan speeds, angles, you know better than me about that. Then have the system dump all this data to the PC or a pi (yes arduino can connect to a pi over serial), and see what you can do with it. WebSDR data + onboard sensor data. Area scans, tracking, just having it scan like movie military radars as a background prop lol.

[Beer_And_zip_ties]

im exided for this hope we have more projects with this. here from canada

[sifustfu]

Did you try different baud rates and bit settings on the serial connection?

[StanIvanov]

Try changing the baud rate for the serial connection, could easily be any of the standard ones up to 115200

[Broken_Yugo]

UART is nothing to be afraid of, it's really just serial but with logic level signals. Just be careful with the cheaper USB UART boards, I forget the exact problem but it had to do with the 3.3 V mode not working right.

[Lunalunea]

Definitely try the uart header, that's your best shot ! There is a video of Flashback team showcasing how they did it on a Wireless ap, you could take inspiration from there

[downwardDogggo]

the cisco blue db-9 to rj45 cable is a "rollover cable" (aka null modem). it depentds on what the console expects here, and im guessing it differes from say a cisco swithch in how the dish exposes a "console" port.

[memeconnect]

a discord community will be a great thing for you to have when looking for answers :) i also wanna say thanks for all the good content you are putting out :)

[beefchicken]

Can you post a high resolution photo of the board someplace?

[webluke]

An Arduino with stepper controls seems like a better option for full control without having to have a bunch of conversions. You can send step commands directly. I would think they are also doing some extra RF power stuff with the board, so you may have to do something there.