DIY all-sky cam?

[Armsoft]

Hi Mark,

I don't have any experience of the SPC210 but the specs say it is CMOS. It might be okay without an IR filter and stack a few exposures. I would think that your Xbox camera would work just as well, be worth a comparison?

I'm sure your proberbly right, hopefully my 'dummy' camera housings from fleabay will arrive in the next couple of days, when they do I'll make two of them and see how they perform (might give my QHY5 a try too)

Worth a try.

[Michaelpt]

Hi everybody

I just recently put together a sky cam , at the moment it is on test mode,

please have a look at the following webpage to see the images and the information on how I've put It together

The camera is very cheap £29 .00

I made a mirror using a garden stainless steel Ball

At the moment it is set up to capture whether clouds,

I have another camera coming soon to test which should be able to detect stars etc

http://www.weather-above.com/video.html

mick

[Gina]

WOW! That's a clever idea - I hadn't thought of that Maybe a small webcam would be an improvement, reducing the central obstruction. Even perhaps an LX modded SPC900NC which could grab nighttime images. I feel a project coming on

[JamesF]

Indeed it is. A very neat solution. I wouldn't have said the camera housing is a really noticeable obstruction, but it certainly could be made smaller. I reckon it could be cut down to about 40mm with perhaps a 5mm diameter hollow support for the wires. Certainly worth thinking about. Where did you get the stainless ball, Mick?

James

[Michaelpt]

Indeed it is. A very neat solution. I wouldn't have said the camera housing is a really noticeable obstruction, but it certainly could be made smaller. I reckon it could be cut down to about 40mm with perhaps a 5mm diameter hollow support for the wires. Certainly worth thinking about. Where did you get the stainless ball, Mick?

James

Hi

the stainless steel ball was from a garden centre, you can purchase them from the eBay, I have the device at the moment on top of a conservatory roof as it easy for me to make any modifications, From my particular application for recording weather it Works extremely well, I would like to move the setup to my garage roof where this will give a View of the sky With no obstructions, I agree if you take the camera out Of the existing casing And Mount in a smaller Box you can get it down to about 40-50mm

When I purchased the camera it came in a waterproof domed Metal casing so I kept it as it is as it was easy to just mount this to a plastic fitting on top of the poll, I have another Camera which is half the size ,I am waiting for a connecting cable so I can put this together it should also pick up stars as the lux on the new camera is 0.0002

by using the Dome you can do away with expensive lenses, When I assemble the next camera I'll put in a small heater to keep everything condensation free

Hopefully in the next few weeks I Should have the New camera up and running ,

As the project stands using a cheap camera, Stainless steel Mirror, plastic box, Piece of pipe, total cost Proximally £45.00

The stainless steel garden domed balls come in all different sizes

Cutting the stainless steel ball In half I used a Hobby Rotary cutting tool, If you don't fancy cutting the Stainless Steel ball you could mount

the whole ball in the box just have half of it protruding out

I used speech technology to help me with my dyslexia sorry for any wrong pronounced words

mick

mick

[Stargazing_Cliff]

you best of using them classic digital 35mm camera's with some decent iso setting and bit of exposure shutter speed get them for couple quid

use that as all in one diy sky cam take some them cool time lapses's milkyways so on.

and if you search lot of the older digital 35mm camera's can be modded with longer exposure. and run that with some software to timelapse.

or could use modded xbox cam and add wide lens to it and any special filters probably do trick.

or buy dome cctv video camera and thats all in one sky cam sorted ready for outside and use easycap device to capture video to computer.

[fwm891]

Have you seen these from rfconcepts : http://www.cameras-cctv.com/dome-cameras/2586 or: http://www.cameras-cctv.com/bw-board_camera/Camera_Board_1004XA

I think there are long exposure designs around for the 1004XA board which may help with the night time cloud captures....

[DrRobin]

Hi,

I use a 1004XA with F1.6 lens. I then use Astrovideo to integrate 750 frames in complete darkness, 100 frames in the evening and 1 frame at all other times. AV also handles the auto-upload to my website, see the night sky camera link for the images of last night.

At 750 frames it is sensitive to see the plough and other main constellations.

It runs fully automated, only requires manual intervention when ftp fails.

[DrRobin]

Forgot to mention AV also does 'dark frame' subtraction, but due to drift in the electronics this needs to be periodically re-done. it looks like mine needs redoing again.

This is a 24x7 system, it was first switched on at the start of June, so has been running for 2 months now.

[The Sailor]

I have weatherproofed one of those IP Pan/Tilt cams (£35) using it for security and can see what clouds are around if i tilt upwards .

Jim

[garethmob]

hello guys

sorry to bring an old thread from the grave but i was wondering if any one had one of these

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Starlight-Night-View-Sky-Video-Galaxy-Camera-0003-Lux-/350429564868?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item51973acfc4

it was posted in the 1st/2nd page but i was wonderin if any one had one now and could share any advice on it

many thanks

gaz

[Physicist13]

a perseid from CCTV cam (about £50). recored to DVR frm Maplin.

[NickK]

Very neat idea - have you thought about car windscreen polish - there's a specific one that dries clear and seals itself so that the water literally runs off without a trace. Usually the windowscreen wipers would trash it but it usually means no wipe unless a deluge.

I think a weather/cloud camera/sensor will be on my list. Also I may use another camera as a low light CCTV cam and have the same computer processing frames, rejecting any frame with very small differences and recording the frames with differences (ie possible intruders, cats etc). With the CCTV I would make the white IR lights only switch on in the case of detected intruder or low light.

[Physicist13]

Nick,

ty! good idea I'll look into that! The IR lights are disabled on my cam (otherwise it becomes mothcam!). /the dvr s/w has motion detect and this csaptures most of the meteors quite well but obv also pics up planes and satellites. Its handy in tht its all self contained, as it were, so doesnt tie up a PC or eat away at its hard drive.

P

[NickK]

Just remembered - RainX

[Horwig]

Can I resurect this thread please. After a pm from Gonzo enquiring about my enclosure, I got my all sky cam out of the forgotten projects cupboard. I've fiddled about with it a bit, and its ok, but I'm stumped about software. I'd been using using it with PHD2 and QGVideo. but could do with removing dark frames, or using a bad pixel map. PHD creates both, but looks as if it does not apply them to the displayed image, probably only uses them for processing. and QGVideo looks like it only uses them for creating AVIs. Short of getting some software written , what else is out there that can display the output of my QHY5, with dark subtracted frames?

Ta

Huw

[Gonzo]

Just finished my Raspberry pi-sky box.

POE injectors ~ IP66 box ~ perplex dome 100mm ~ RPI

This is a model A, in the final setup there's a model B+. This was just a test as my model A was just there close by.

NoIR camera ~ M12 lens adaptor ~ M12 Lens aperture F/1.6 | focal length 2.9mm | 

All sealed....

nearly finished product (need to adjust the focus for the stars then seal the dome and fix it with a set of small bolts/nuts.)

and add the Arduino weather station within the box.

I've been testing it the other night, with the tool raspistill, 10sec pictures and you can clearly see the night sky.

Quite impressed with it to be honest.

The box will also host the weather station (awaiting delivery of my second arduino, the first one didn't survive my mistake.... oops,,,, smokeyyyyy)

[ChrisLX200]

Just finished my Raspberry pi-sky box.

POE injectors ~ IP66 box ~ perplex dome 100mm ~ RPI

This is a model A, in the final setup there's a model B+. This was just a test as my model A was just there close by.

NoIR camera ~ M12 lens adaptor ~ M12 Lens aperture F/1.6 | focal length 2.9mm | 

All sealed....

nearly finished product (need to adjust the focus for the stars then seal the dome and fix it with a set of small bolts/nuts.)

and add the Arduino weather station within the box.

I've been testing it the other night, with the tool raspistill, 10sec pictures and you can clearly see the night sky.

Quite impressed with it to be honest.

The box will also host the weather station (awaiting delivery of my second arduino, the first one didn't survive my mistake.... oops,,,, smokeyyyyy)

A nice project, but I think you'll need to add heating at the top end (using a dew strap is good) to keep dew at bay, and some internal desiccant to keep it dry inside.

ChrisH

[Gonzo]

A nice project, but I think you'll need to add heating at the top end (using a dew strap is good) to keep dew at bay, and some internal desiccant to keep it dry inside.

 

ChrisH

thanks for the dew strap tip, as for the box, it's an IP66 rated one. It's water proof. In theory nothing should happen, but some desiccant wouldn't hurt...

[pete_l]

So far as anti-dew heating goes, a bit of clever routing of the warm air from the RPi might be enough to do the trick. Especially if you write a

while [ true ] ; do : ; done

shell loop to keep the CPU busy

[Gonzo]

As usual, when you have a new astro toy..... it's cloudy. Mind you, this is also to check for clouds... so shouldn't complain too much.

[Gina]

This is a project that's on my long list of projects   Trouble is everything seems to take a hundred times as long to do as I had planned!  It used to be ten times but I'm not as young as I was

[ChrisLX200]

Mine has a dew strap inside the metal casing, near the top, and it's just enough to keep the dew off - unless it gets really bad.

ChrisH

[Gonzo]

Which controller do you use please?

I'm after something that can be done either by an arduino or by the raspberry pi. And it must run on 5V, cannot run a 12V line.

[ChrisLX200]

A simple Kendrik 12V.  You'll have to make your own heater system if you want to use 5V. I do have a SharpSky controler that has remote programmable heater output but that is on the scope/mount so can't be used on the all-sky.

ChrisH