Hello and welcome to anyone interested in Discovery Drive, our versatile, weatherproof, turnkey antenna rotator!

Frustrated by the lack of easy-to-use, turnkey antenna rotators, we decided to create Discovery Drive to fill this gap. Currently, the antenna rotator market is filled with many DIY solutions, but they all require significant time investment and access to tools and skills, such as 3D printers and PCB construction, as well as general mechanical construction skills. Higher-end models also tend to be based on older analog control technology and require additional hardware or DIY solutions for digital control with modern software like SatDump.

Discovery Drive, on the other hand, is ready to interface with modern software like SatDump from the get-go. Connect it to your home Wi-Fi network, and SatDump can connect to its IP immediately.

Versatile By Design

Discovery Drive was designed for Discovery Dish and mounts directly to its L-bracket, but it’s compatible with other similarly sized antennas like Wi-Fi grid dishes and Yagis. With a Discovery Dish you can track polar-orbiting weather satellites, map galactic hydrogen with the hydrogen line feed, or switch between Inmarsat satellites with the Inmarsat feed. Alternative uses include mounting a camera for automated aircraft photography via ADS-B. We’ll show an example of this in action in a future update!

How We Got Here

Discovery Drive went through a long, iterative development process. We started with a 3D-printed, Arduino-based prototype using small geared DC motors, but it proved too fragile for long-term use. We stepped up to a beefier gearbox on the output, adding the strength we needed, then swapped the Arduino for an ESP32-based controller to enable direct Wi-Fi control. At that point we had to pause development while the tariff situation unfolded, as it was unclear whether the product would remain viable. Once things settled, we went through several more enclosure iterations and arrived at what you see in this campaign: easy to set up, easy to maintain, versatile, and portable enough to take on trips or reposition as needed.

Low Power, Simple Cable Runs

An important design goal was keeping power consumption low enough that a single PoE+ supply (25 W max) could power the Drive alongside a Raspberry Pi and RTL-SDR. In a typical setup with a Discovery Dish or Wi-Fi grid dish, Discovery Drive draws under 10 W, leaving a comfortable 15 W for everything else. That means you can run a single Ethernet cable to a mast-mounted PoE splitter powering the Drive, a Pi 5 running SatDump, and an RTL-SDR. One cable, one clean run.

Campaign

Thank you to anyone who backs our campaign and to those who follow along. We’re looking forward to seeing all the fun people have with Discovery Drive!