jiberjaber

With my DSLR I don't have any temperature measurement (Nikon) so at the end of a session, I just wrapped it in a drybag outside with the intervalometer and cover on the camera and left it to run through taking darks. This gave me a good number of darks at circa 6degrees of 10min over an hour and a bit. I just use them within pixinsight for any sub up to 10mins (pixinsight will 'optimize' the dark to match the sub duration).

Not sure what's going on with the images, I just pasted them in to the message and the forum is hosting them? Anyway, I suspect you might be right, my belt finally gave up - hoping the replacement drops through the letterbox tomorrow!

Yes, I agree on the waterproofing, best I could do was a bead of silicon - I can't remember what the FL is on this lens, I think it might be 6mm from memory. I'll look for dome - this was always supposed to be a temp solution to try it out

Spent another 45 mins fettling with the focus, tried to get a stream I could view on the laptop to help but didnt work so went back to capture to remove drive and view on laptop. Think its a bit better now but shows the cheapness of the lens with lack of focus in the corners. Will have to wait for the stars to come out to know better

I use an unused garden waste bag from Lidl to cover over my mount and tripod over extended periods of use, a bungee cord holds it to the tripod to prevent the wind getting under. Would one of them be large enough for your application? Similar: https://www.wilko.com/en-uk/wilko-231l-round-garden-bag/p/0298981

That was great, a bit like Elite but not. It was quite easy when you ignore the scenery and concentrate on the numbers. Sort out attitude first (right controls) then position (left controls) - almost like Polar Alignment lol

Wow - thats a beast of a camera just to check if the clouds are up or not!

So the new(er) lens is wider though not super wide. I've ordered a wider lens M12 fitting but might be some time before that arrives, might need to fettle with the focus but as it is jammed into a coke bottle its a bit hard to get in there to connect it to a monitor so having to adjust, capture manually and then view over a network share, not ideal! The 3d printed mount worked well. I decided as I had some silicone sealant to hand to use that on the lens threads to seal the lid, hopefully it will not prevent any further focusing. Black mark represents UP direction of the camera, so at the moment, the image shows N along the bottom edge.

Something odd has happened, the execution of /usr/bin/raspistill -q 100 -ISO auto -awb greyworld -n -ex auto -w 800 -h 600 -o /run/shm/webcam.jpg isn't happening, can't see anything in the logs but if I reboot, /run/shm only contains error.jpg but if I manually run the raspistill line it creates the webcam.jpg file and is visible on the webpage. It doesnt seem to be updating. Not sure if something is stuck in the the system somewhere? ETA: Hmmm working now! Not sure what was wrong, I think here is some conflict between editing the webcam script as a normal user and as root when I was pushing through the changes, will give it a reboot to see if it all comes back up as normal.

In the newmovie scripts, is it this part that needs removing?

I've found a wide angle lens in my stock of old first person view cameras I used to fly with. Not 180 FoV but wider than the stock lens. The M12 lens mount worked so I am printing an end for the bottle camera. Just need to work out how I am going to focus it, suspect I'll have to disconnect the camera and bring it in the house, hook it up on HDMI and then twiddle whilst looking at some clouds LOL I'll have to remove it to fit the new end anyway, so shouldn't be too much of a problem. More of a problem is a screen for the lens, suspect I might just leave this one with a smear of grease around the end of the lens thread. Will know more in an hours time when the print has finished

Hi Pete - sorry I was referring to the about page - add a link there

Might want to add a link to the github page as well? I'm going to give a M12 lens a go, I thought taking one off an existing board camera and repurposing it might work but the mounting centers are different. However, I have come across a 3d printed M12 mount for the V2 camera which I will give a go, I was hoping someone might have already done a 3D printable version, so happy to try it out https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=233466

haha - thats a great image, I think if it tried that on mine the camera housing would fall apart! It looks like the the image with the banner is made as the page is created so might be able to use that as the source for the webcam files? More than happy for you to incorporate the changes, It looks like the backup script didn't work at this end on the newnightmovie.sh execution, suspect it is a permissions issue. Might have a look tomorrow! Another great clear night here!

I've reverted back to 800x600 but left the quality at 100. Also added a small bit to the about page to give an indication of load I've also inserted my backup scripts in to the newdaymovie/newnightmovie files, one for day and one for night. Here's an example of the night one, it seems to work when run itself, interesting to see if it all works OK when called from the newdaymovie/newnightmovie. I've inserted it inbetween the move of new MP4 to replace the old and the clean up for next time parts #backup DAY files /bin/sh /home/allsky/backupnight.sh Looking forward to seeing if the increase from 4 to 5 gives an all night movie. I was thinking, whilst watching the day movie, it would be nice to have some idea of time as the sky moves above, perhaps the banner that is in the webpage image. I think when I looked at the webpage, the time banner image is created on the fly and not saved?

I've been playing with the all sky cam and was interested to see if changing the capture resolution increased the FoV as I had noticed that on other software. The bad news is that it seems to stay the same when I switch up to the largest resolution that still supports 2x2 binning. I also adjusted the capture jpg quality to 100% - it's not like I am short of storage space on my 64GB card that's in it and everything is now copied off to a network drive anyhow. I've exposed it on to the internet for a short while if anyone is interested in taking a look http://jiberjaber.dyndns.org/index.html

Yeah - I am not sure final location at the moment, will depend on how wide a lens I can get working, current location is good as I can just see the TV aerial which gives me an indication it's still working. With a wider lens I might need to relocate. Current idea is on top of the weather station but thats on the end of a scaff pole so less easy to get to to maintain, plus side is it might be self cleaning from the weather! Obv subject to final enclosure too!

No probs, happy to up my night time shot time as well to test, I'm just playing with a backup script to copy the files to a date based directory and then rsync it over my network - probably needs running before the files are deleted for the previous session (i.e. on the transition from night to day mode). Where would be a good place to grab the old data before it is removed? Yes - I have the same problem with my security camera, it often has white streaks across it where the IR bounces back off spider webs! Luckily the camera can be reached from one of our windows with a duster on a stick! Might be more of a challenge with the all sky camera location though!

Given the file which is 45k still has a valid image in it, perhaps the low total light is resulting in a smaller file?

Ah - so the webcam part of capturing and showing on the web page working fine, but the concat and night movie stopped at 22:20 which is the time for Nautical Set. I've rebooted but no webcam jpg appearing in the pics directory? Seems the webcam.jpg file is being created in the /run/shm/ but is 45k in size and seems to be copied and then deleted by the copy script??

I run Astroberry, it's good, at the moment I'm using a simple 3d printed case with the fan mounted inside. Power wise I use a 12V to USB converter which advertises 2.5A capability so just one supply to the mount (12V) https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B06XSCCLCD/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o08_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 I think that FLIRC case looks great and think I'll probably migrate to that eventually. On mine I am lucky to have a gigabit link long with my 12V feed from the house that I roll out when needed. I did try POE as a solution but it didn't want to play over the cable distance for some reason (power worked, but not network, suspect it was the injection kit). I run Kstars/Ekos on the device and remote in to the device, I don't find Kstars stable enough on Windows to trust it and I am happy to let the Pi do the work, it doesn't seem to miss a heart beat in that respect. My images are saved over the network when captured.

It's an unbelievable clear night tonight! Not the usual skies I was expecting to have to fettle with the focus but it seems fairly good..

Yep thats my plan, I have asked a mate who runs a CCTV company if he had any spare but I just missed him chucking some out last week! Never mind.

OK, very happy with this! Good work Pete!

Probably need to adjust the cut over time or phase the ramp of exposure, it seems too bright at the moment now... That said, it looks like the camera has caught the handle of the plough!