Your First Connection

This tutorial walks you through physically connecting to your dish, finding the serial port on your computer, and getting the firmware prompt to respond.

Prerequisites

• A Winegard dish with power supply, plugged in
• The correct serial adapter for your variant (see What You Need)
• birdcage and console-probe installed via uv sync

Connect to the firmware console

1. Wire up the adapter

   Connect your serial adapter to the dish’s RJ-25 (Trav’ler) or RJ-12 (Carryout G2) jack. Make sure the power supply is connected but the dish does not need to be powered on yet.

   Trav'ler (RS-485)

   Connect your USB-to-RS232 adapter to the DTECH RS232-to-RS485 converter. Wire the RS-485 A/B outputs to pins 2-3 of the RJ-25 cable. Pin 1 is ground.

   Only two signal wires are used in half-duplex mode (plus ground).

   Carryout G2 (RS-422)

   Connect your USB-to-RS422 adapter to the RJ-12 cable. All four signal wires are used:

   Adapter Label	RJ-12 Pin	Function
   TX+ (TA)	Pin 2	Computer to dish
   TX- (TB)	Pin 3	Computer to dish
   RX+ (RA)	Pin 4	Dish to computer
   RX- (RB)	Pin 5	Dish to computer
   GND	Pin 1	Ground

2. Plug in the USB adapter

   Connect the USB side of your adapter to your computer. Find the serial port:

   # Linux
   ls /dev/ttyUSB* /dev/ttyACM* 2>/dev/null
   
   # macOS
   ls /dev/tty.usbserial* /dev/cu.usbserial* 2>/dev/null

   You should see something like /dev/ttyUSB0 or /dev/ttyUSB2. If nothing appears, check that your adapter is recognized by the OS (dmesg | tail on Linux).

3. Power on the dish

   Apply power to the dish. If this is a fresh power-on, the firmware will run through its boot sequence.

   Trav'ler (HAL variants)

   The Trav’ler boots and runs a calibration sequence, homing the motors to their reference positions. This takes 10-15 seconds. You’ll see boot messages ending with one of:

   NoGPS
   No LNB Voltage

   The prompt character is >.

   Carryout G2

   The G2 has a more verbose boot sequence:

   Bootloader v1.01
   SPI1 init @ 4 MHz      (A3981 motor drivers)
   Motor init              (System=12Inch, master=40000 steps)
   SPI2 init @ 6.857 MHz  (BCM4515 DVB tuner)
   EXTENDED_DVB_DEBUG ENABLED
   DVB init                (BCM4515 ID 0x4515 Rev B0, FW v113.37)
   Enabled LNB STB
   Ant ID - 12-IN G2

   After homing (if tracker is enabled), you’ll see the TRK> prompt. If the tracker is already disabled via NVS 20, homing is skipped and you get TRK> immediately.

4. Verify communication

   Open a quick connection to confirm the firmware responds:

   Trav'ler (HAL variants)

   uv run birdcage pos --port /dev/ttyUSB0 --firmware hal205

   Expected output:

   AZ: 180.0
   EL: 45.0

   Carryout G2

   uv run birdcage pos --port /dev/ttyUSB2 --firmware g2

   Expected output:

   AZ: 180.0
   EL: 45.0

   If you get a position readout, your connection is working.

5. Explore the help menu

   To see what the firmware offers, you can use console-probe in discover-only mode:

   uv run console-probe --port /dev/ttyUSB2 --baud 115200 --discover-only

   Or, if you have a terminal emulator (like minicom or screen), connect directly and type ? followed by Enter:

   TRK> ?

   This prints the list of available commands and submenus. On the Carryout G2, you’ll see entries for mot (motor control), dvb (DVB tuner), nvs (non-volatile storage), gpio, and more.

Garbled data at the right baud rate?

If you see garbage characters but your baud rate is correct, the RX polarity is likely swapped. On RS-422 (Carryout G2), swap the + and - wires on the RX pair (pins 4 and 5). Systematic bit inversion from reversed polarity produces garbled output, not random noise.

If the dish doesn’t respond at all (no garbled data, just silence), the TX pair polarity may be swapped. The dish can’t decode inverted framing, so it silently ignores your commands.

Do not type 'q' at the root prompt

The q command at the root TRK> prompt terminates the firmware shell entirely. The console becomes unresponsive until you power-cycle the dish. This is not the same as exiting a submenu — q inside a submenu returns you to the parent menu safely.

What you should see

After a successful connection, you have a working serial link to the firmware console. The dish is listening for commands, and you can query its position, explore submenus, and issue motor commands.

From here, there are two paths:

Your First Satellite Track Disable the TV search, start the rotctld server, and track a satellite with Gpredict.

Wiring Guide Detailed pinouts, adapter options, and cable diagrams for all variants.