What You Need

Before you start, you need three things: a dish, a way to talk to it, and the software to drive it. This page covers all three.

Hardware

A Winegard Dish

Any of the five supported variants will work:

• Trav’ler (HAL 0.0.00 or HAL 2.05) — the most common, found on RV rooftops
• Trav’ler Pro — USB A-to-A connection, requires ODU tunnel command
• Carryout (2003 model) — portable dome, different motor protocol
• Carryout G2 — fully reverse-engineered, best documented variant

Surplus units are regularly available on eBay. The dish does not need a working receiver or subscription — you only need the antenna unit and its power supply.

Serial Adapter

The adapter type depends on your dish variant:

• Trav’ler (any HAL version): USB-to-RS232 adapter + DTECH RS232-to-RS485 converter
• Carryout G2: USB-to-RS422 adapter (DSD TECH SH-U11 with FTDI FT232R, or equivalent)
• Trav’ler Pro: USB A-to-A cable (shows up as ttyACM0)
• Carryout (2003): USB-to-RS485 adapter (same as Trav’ler)

Cables

• Trav’ler / Carryout 2003: RJ-25 (6P6C) cable from IDU to your adapter. Standard phone cable works.
• Carryout G2: RJ-12 (6P6C) cable. Same physical connector, but uses all 4 signal wires (RS-422 full-duplex).
• A short run (under 3 meters) is fine without termination resistors.

Power Supply

The dish needs 120VAC input to its RP-SK87 power supply, which outputs 12VDC to the IDU. The IDU in turn sends 12-18VDC bias through the coax to the LNB.

LNB Bias Voltage

The internal coax carries 12-18VDC bias for the LNB. Do not connect 5V equipment (SDR LNAs, RTL-SDR dongles, etc.) directly to the dish’s coax output without bypassing the power injector. You will damage the equipment.

Which adapter do I need?

The dish variants use two different serial standards. This matters when buying an adapter.

Variant	Standard	Wires	Baud Rate	Recommended Adapter
Trav’ler (HAL 0.0.00)	RS-485 half-duplex	2 + GND	57600	USB-to-RS232 + DTECH RS232-to-RS485
Trav’ler (HAL 2.05)	RS-485 half-duplex	2 + GND	57600	USB-to-RS232 + DTECH RS232-to-RS485
Trav’ler Pro	USB direct	USB A-to-A	57600	USB A-to-A cable
Carryout (2003)	RS-485 half-duplex	2 + GND	57600	USB-to-RS485
Carryout G2	RS-422 full-duplex	4 + GND	115200	DSD TECH SH-U11 (FTDI FT232R)

RS-485 half-duplex shares one differential pair for both transmit and receive. RS-422 uses separate pairs for each direction. The G2 talks at twice the baud rate of the other variants.

Software

Python 3.10+

The birdcage package requires Python 3.10 or later for type annotation support.

uv Package Manager

We use uv for dependency management. Install it with:

curl -LsSf https://astral.sh/uv/install.sh | sh

Gpredict (optional)

Gpredict provides orbital prediction and real-time tracking via the rotctld protocol. Any Hamlib rotctld client works.

Installing the software

Clone the repository and install both packages:

git clone https://github.com/your-org/winegard-travler.git
cd winegard-travler
uv sync

This installs two CLI tools:

• birdcage — antenna control, rotctld server, position queries, manual moves
• console-probe — firmware exploration and command discovery tool

Verify the installation:

uv run birdcage --help
uv run console-probe --help

Next steps

Your First Connection Plug in the adapter, find the serial port, and talk to the firmware console.