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davefi

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  1. Hi Gina, so sorry I only just saw this, its been a crazy year with one thing or another and the time has flown by, not had a chance to do anything with my camera, and completely forgot to even look at the forums (how on earth is it almost September already)... Anyway, if you still need them, I got them from Electrical Counter: https://www.electricalcounter.co.uk/products/Cable+Accessories/Pressure+Equalization+Units/EVPS+20+Polyamide+Pressure+compensation+unit+IP68/2483938539
  2. Since the weather took a turn, I have not really used it - I hadn't had the chance to adequately test it for waterproofness and we have barely had any nights without some rain at least forecast, and I just didn't want to risk it. I plan to strip it down and put the enclosure out for a few days in more variable weather to see how it performs, but I haven't had the time yet - I'll certainly update the thread once I have done some more testing though.
  3. We wouldn't be able to sleep if we locked ours in, they are far to noisy - honestly I've never heard anything like the noises one makes, babies crying have nothing on our short haired moggy! His brother isn't as vocal, but he will bash the hell out of the catflap until you wake up and unlock it - certainly know who runs our household 🤣 Hope all was OK though.
  4. -0.9C here in sunny Oxfordshire last night (well this morning). Min temp forecast to be back up to 8C by end of the weekend though!
  5. Hi Gina - I found another box, same size as the one you purchased, but similar style to the larger one I had. Arrived today and I can confirm the seals are inside the fixing screws like my larger one, so might be a viable alternative for you if the waterproofing is still a concern: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B006ZP1LRA
  6. Made a couple of updates: 1. Replaced the relay - the one I was using was not turning off reliably. I'd overcome that in the code, but after switching to a new relay with an octocoupler, it worked much more reliably (at the top in the photo below). 2. Added an INA219 breakout board to monitor the power, current and voltage - useful to check the dew heater is or isn't on, and overall system health (at the bottom in the photo below). 3. Added a breather vent - from various sources I've read online over the past few weeks, it was recommended to have such a device to allow the enclosure to equalise in pressure with the outside, to avoid forcing water in through the seals and/or condensation forming inside the enclosure itself. The vents are ePTFE membranes, which I believe act much like Gore-Tex, allowing the enclosure to breath without allowing water in. Some information at the bottom of this page: https://www.wiska.co.uk/en/30/cat/262/venting/ Octocoupled Relay: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B07TYG14N6/ INA219 Breakout PCB: https://thepihut.com/products/adafruit-ina219-high-side-dc-current-sensor-breakout-26v-3-2a-max M20 VentPLUG: https://www.wiska.co.uk/en/30/pde/10106591/evps-20.html
  7. Hi all, been lurking here for a few weeks reading up on the various observatory and camera builds. Always been interested in astronomy but never had the time, money or space to do anything about it, so been quite interesting watching you all building things! I'd been wanting to build my All Sky Camera for a while after seeing some star trail and timelapse footage, so have been reading up and collecting parts. Finally finished it yesterday/today, so thought I'd put together what I have done. I have a Raspberry Pi 3b connected to a WD Green SSD running Thomas Jacquin's All Sky software (https://github.com/thomasjacquin/allsky), with the HQ Camera support that Rob Musquetier added. Its housed in a large weather proof* enclosure, under a 4" dome. The dome is heated with a Dew Heater from AllSky Optics, which is controlled via a relay that the Pi is controlling. The dome, enclosure and outside air temp are monitored by 1-wire DS18B20 sensors, and the whole thing is powered via POE, with a 12v to 5v convertor powering the Pi. Preparing the cover for the done fixing holes, the camera hole, the camera fixing screws, the heater cables and the DS18B20 sensor. Gasket cut from 1mm gasket sheet. Test fit-up with the gasket in position, inner ring of black sticky back felt, dew heater, final ring of black felt. The exposed plastic from the camera hole was also coloured black with a Sharpie. I wasn't sure about painting the dew heater or not, but from the test footage I did last night, it doesn't look necessary for now, so I will leave it. Dew heater and DS18B20 fitted. Everything fitted internally. WD Green SSD & Pi3b is installed in an old 6x6 WD case, minus the cover. The POE splitter is at the top, with the power cables running from a 2.1mm DC jack-to-terminal connector, into some 3-way Wago blocks. 1 wire from the 3-ways, go to the CPT 12v to 5v converter, which goes to 2 more 2-way Wago blocks, then off to the Pi3b via modified USB cable. The other connections on the 3-way's go to the dew heater (ground) and the relay (12v). The relay control is then wired to the GPIO header on the Pi3b. Lastly, the DS18B20's are connected to a small stripboard with the 4.7K resistor (in the small black box at the bottom), which is then connected to the GPIO headers. And the finished unit. I used it last night and didn't turn on the dew heater until I saw some dew forming, and very pleased to say it cleared it very quickly. I left it on all night and it maxed out at ~23c in the dome. Unfortunately we do have a really annoying street light on the right, which is giving the red glow all over the photo, but it is only temporarily thrown on the utility room roof, so I hope to move it further into the garden and the houses along the side should hide the light (although then introduce their own, but hopefully they will not be on all night! Shopping List - I know I always appreciate it when people provide links to the parts they used, so mine are below: Gasket Sheet: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00FEIP2HY Relay: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B07V1YQQGL DC Power Jack to Terminal Connectors: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B07RHM5KCW 12V POE Splitters: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B078JNVRTR Outdoor Enclosure: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B0151KNMB2 (*note: the seal is crappy foam and ripped in two when I went to remove it (ironically to protect it), so not sure I trust it in the rain, yet!) 4" Dome: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B01N29BQN6 Fisheye lens: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B01CX4U7DK/ Waterproof DS18B20 Sensors: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B07DNWX5LB Wago Blocks: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B07QBC9DKS Pi HQ Camera: https://thepihut.com/products/raspberry-pi-high-quality-camera-module Dew Heater: https://www.allskyoptics.com/store/product/allsky-camera-dew-heater-module 12v to 5v Converter: https://www.allskyoptics.com/store/product/dc-to-dc-converter-regulator-12v-to-5v-3a-15w-power-supply SSD and Pi3B were ones I already had, but easy enough to locate from usual outlets. I think that is more or less all the main things! Thanks for reading!
  8. Thats exactly the kind of thing I really want a 3D printer for! One day I might eventually find space to set one up 🙄
  9. Oops, sorry copy & paste error! https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B0151KNMB2/
  10. I went with similar, but slightly bigger (enclosure): https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B0151KNM If it is the same as mine, be careful with the seal - I assumed it was rubber and pulled it out to keep it safe while I was drilling holes in case I caught or nicked it, and the bloody thing just ripped in two, as its some cruddy foam seal.
  11. The commercial weatherstation I use has a haptic rain sensor. It is useless for drizzle, but works extremely well for "normal" rain, I often get a phone notification before I realise it is raining. Might be another idea to investigate - except the drizzle aspect (which as previously mentioned is also an issue with the tipping bucket as well).
  12. Yeah emmc is certainly better than SD based storage. I'm just a bit obsessed with RPi so haven't looked at many other SBC's 🙂 I've only just started playing with the Wemo D1 Mini's, I really like their form factor. I've got some ESP32's in the D1 Mini form factor coming to have a play with as well. Just need to find the time to actually complete some projects now!
  13. You can always use SSD's with the RPi's. I've not used SD cards on any of my permanent Pi deployments - and a 120GB SSD is the same price as an SD card these days.
  14. You could look at the Pi3A+ as a mid-way point. I did have a Pi0 running my UDP listener and MQTT client to push my weather data to my MQTT server on my other VLAN, but it kept missing UDP packets. I swapped out the a 3A+ and its been rock solid. Its still WiFi only. I have so many different Pi's knocking about it was easy to try and see if it worked any better, but if you already have a Pi3B and are able to wire up anyway, then that's likely the best solution.
  15. My initial thought was the client ID as well. You could eliminate the esp's completely and just run a couple of scripts on the Mint box, that publishes to the MQTT broker. That would a) test that the Pi0 can handle the multiple clients (which I doubt is the issue), and b) check to see if multiple clients are working in general. Its pretty easy to set that up in via e.g. a Python script. Once you know that part is OK, stop one of the scripts, and introduce one of the esp's. If you still have both clients (the script and the esp) working, then introduce the 2nd esp. If the script is still publishing OK and the esp stops, then at least you know for sure its related to the esp's. Then perhaps modify the esp client to just publish a number every second to remove the sensor hardware. If that is still working, then it hopefully helps you narrow down the issue.
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