Gina

How thin did you make them?

Checked up on the approximate pulses per second versus mph and I get about 1p/s for 1mph so 100mph would produce 100 pulses per second or 10ms minimum time between pulses. I reckon even the Arduino should be able to handle this from its interrupt system.

Been looking at the whole design again to see if I can make use of knowledge I have gained since I last looked at it. I don't need to use WiFi if I attach the mast to my observatory which is what I'm planning. Currently the mast is fastened to a fence post to the NE of the scope position and does get in the way of imaging at times. With it placed to the north or NW it will be out of the way - I never seem to find anything to image in that direction. Power will be supplied from my observatory battery backed 13.8v supply and I have gigabit Ethernet available back to the house. I'm not really happy with using discontinued parts as there would be a problem of replacement in case of failure. Also, although the circuitry is built and was working, I have only tried it at room temperature and cannot say it will work when it's very cold though according to the chip specs, it should do. Also, I would prefer circuitry I can publish as a working system for anyone else to copy if they want to. As such, I'm reviewing the whole thing. As far as the wind instruments are concerned probably the worst cast of discontinued devices is the 1-wire counter - a great shame as this is a 32bit binary counter meaning it could count pulses from the anemometer and not overflow for 4,000 years even if we had constant winds of 100mph! I'm going to see if the pulses can be counted in software.

I've used similar things in the past.

Interesting Compatibility mode eh? Maybe that's what I need to install astro stuff on Win 10. Maybe I can use my Win 10 mini PC box after all.

Yes, pretty much I may just see if the FO rain gauge is working and possibly make my own later. One thing wanted is a bit of heating when the temperature drops below freezing so that snow or freezing rain can be catered for. Just printed the wind vane hub. Was about to change over to white for the encoder but found the white wouldn't go through the 2mm PTFE tube in spite of claiming to be 1.75mm Wonder if the translucent filament would work alright - should be almost as reflective. Or there's pink.

That looks fine I may well make myself a new one - can't be any worse that the Fine Offset brand cheapo one I should be able to produce something rather more accurate with any luck. I agree with an optical sensor - magnet and reed switch will slightly impede the motion. An alternative would be Hall switch with magnet - there is no iron in the Hall device to pull on the magnet and a Hall switch is simpler than LED and phototransistor.

Now 3D printing a dew shield for the 105mm lens.

Simple and complicated ones on thingiverse I just used a standard funnel on the top to increase the collection area. There's at lot about my earlier weather station projects on another forum site. One of my threads.

If you have a 3D printer available you might be interested in tipping bucket thingiverse

One possibility might be to modify the manual arrangement with some method of emptying the water. There are a number of ways to automate measuring the water height in a measuring cylinder such as ultrasonic - which I use to check the water in the sump under my observatory. Maybe a combination of level sensing and tipping bucket... OTOH do we actually need accurate rain measurement?

Tipping bucket They aren't very accurate and calibration depends on rain rate. The one I have is just the one from the Maplin kit which is a standard Chinese clone same as many others. It's just a plastic bucket - very crude. Replacement cost of whole rain gauge is just a few pounds I would like something better but what? I might have a think about this but with so many people failing to improve on the tipping bucket for an automatic weather station I guess I'll need tho think pretty hard

I'm using the standard tipping bucket with a reed switch and magnet on the bucket. Quite a large funnel feeds it. Or I should say was using.... Not using anything ATM I'll see if I can find more details.

When going through some boxes in my store room I came across one containing some of the bits for my weather station, so had a look. I don't think there's a lot needed to get this working. Last time I looked at it I was stumped by not having a decent 3D printer working but having spent time on my Pilot printer recently it's now working well so I'm in a position to further this project a bit more. It might prove to be "light relief" from some of the others I've just tidied up the wind vane hub and encoder so I can now print that. It would be nice to be able to display wind direction and speed indoors. The model for these two parts is shown above - it will be printed in two parts and glued together. I haven't got a two colour printer yet. I'll be looking back through this thread to see where I had got to. In view of my new knowledge of the Raspberry Pi 3 I might change some of the electronics. For one thing I don't want long 1-wire cabling eaten by rodents as has happened in the past. An RPi 3 with WiFi would only need power to the remote electronics which would be easier to rodent proof. The other problem is that 1-wire seems to be dropped by Maxim - the only manufacturers of the devices.

A quick BPP in PixInsight using an old master flat. Screenshot of PI after histogram stretching. This really needs a lot more data - Simeis 147 is very faint. Amp glow is showing quite badly so, for some reason, my darks aren't doing all they should do. Wonder if I should take more subs (I use 80).

122 subs passed the Blink test - not too bad. I'll be taking some flats today to go with them (if everything isn't frozen up!!).

Had to pack up. Very hard frost with a couple of mm of frost on everything that didn't have any heating! And yes, the lens was dewed up. I wiped it off but almost immediately it came back. The stars are remarkably clear and bright but I wasn't ready and that's that! Maybe I'll be better prepared for next month's clear night

Here an integration of 68 Ha subs of 120s calibrated with master bias and master dark but no flat as I haven't taken any yet with this setup. It needs a lot more data. Histogram stretched in GIMP. Full resolution.

Had a thought... Somewhere I have a Jupiter brand lens of somewhere near that focal length. Have to see if I can find it. Found a Jupiter 9 85mm f2 lens on ebay that looks just like my lens as I remember it - wonder if it is Here another image with the 105mm f2.8 lens. This is full resolution in PNG format without any histogram stretching. I think this lens is even better quality than the 135mm.

A lens focal length of around 90mm would be nice for this. My next one down id 55mm with nearly twice the FOV. Looks like I should try zoom lenses. Maybe I'll print some mountings and focus gears for one or two of my zoom lenses. Downside is the extra exposure required with the smaller aperture.

Yes, this is it - histogram stretched in PixInsight.

I think if I just get IC410 and Simeis 147 in frame and don't bother about IC405 I might just get all of Simeis 147 in.

Wants a bit more FOV to get IC405 and Simeis 147 in the frame. Here is a much stretched 120s sub with IC405 and 410 in the lower right corner and Simeis 147 just about showing in the top left.

Clear night sky and imaging the IC405, IC410 and Simeis 147 area in Ha - 2m subs with gain of 600 and -30C. No dew shield yet so just hoping...

Here is the integration of 310 OIII subs of Orion's Sword. Screenshot of histogram stretched PixInsight image. The calibration isn't working right with a background gradient lightening towards the bottom. Can be taken out with DBE I expect but shouldn't happen.