A Romanian Observatory

[jimao22]

Thank you for your appreciation. I am flattered.

A this point I have a fully functional DIY meteo station with direct connection with the mount and the roof, doing the safety job when I am asleep. Another post will follow with some explanation about this. And from a week I have also a meteor camera, which is part of the national network for meteor surveillance, which will be the third europe's biggest network of this kind. But I will tell you about this next days (hopefully).

[jimao22]

The story of the meteo station is longer (as a time line). It started with some research about doing such a thing based on ARDUINO. A ready made meteo station, for astronomy purpose - in connexions with other hardware - is an expensive stuff and I rather prefer to keep the money for the real astro things, such as cameras, filters or mounts.

So, the final solution was found somewhere on the net (I am sorry I cannot remember where - to much time since than) and the connections between sensors and the main board are in the next picture.

[jimao22]

The drawing was made using the FRITZING software, which is very helpful when using ARDUINO plates. The sensor I used are MLX 90615 - for IR reading the sky and DHT 22 to read the environment temperature. When cloudy, the sky temperature is very close by the surrounding air temperature, so the station should send a message to the mount (via EQMOD) and to the roof (via SELETEK) to react. This was the big challenge !!

The program installed in ARDUINO is an improved version of the program developed by some of the fellows from this forum. The improvement regard the possibility to show the dew-point , which can be helpful in the future to add an extra option for the SELETEK to start the dew-heaters (1), and the possibility to send those messages explained above (2).

Also, my other friend - Radu - who make the programs work together,  make the link between meteo-station and SELETEK via some small Visual Basic scripts written by another friend of mine - Marian - who was in very close touch with Jaime Alemany from LUNATICO ASTRONOMIA. Jaime gave us the name of the internal routine from the SELETEK black-box program, having this way the possibility to call externally that routine from outside the box.

The software connections are shown in the diagram below. 

[jimao22]

I made the station using an ARDUINO UNO and a breadboard but because the electrical connections wasn't very reliable like this, my friend Matei (the wizard, remember?) told me he can do for me a shield who can fit to the ARDUINO board. He did a perfect job and I put all together inside a plastic box, installed INSIDE the observatory, on some metal plate. 

Some observations here: due to the  fact the DHT sensor is mounted on the shield - inside the box, the accuracy of the temperature measurement wasn't so good. I made some holes to repair that, with little effect. The final solution (which is not a solution - for the moment) was to keep the lid unscrewed and aside from the top of the station. In the near future, the DHT sensor will be connected with the shield by some long wires and it will be installed under the station. So, I will close everything sealed, with the lid on top and with the holes plugged. 

The second observation - the station is inside the observatory because is started only after opening the roof. To open the roof, I should check the sky first - and now I have the all-sky camera for meteors, which is good enough for this secondary job. This way, the meteo station is away from the elements except the shooting time, when no rain or fog or snow...

The pictures below illustrate the text here.

[jimao22]

Tonight was a moment of big joy for me - my new ATIK camera arrived today and fortunately it was a clear sky outside, to make some tests and have a run with it. Is a long time since I didn't made any serious picture so now is the time for that. 

Anyway, I made some screen-shots with the meteo station window, to see what is there and how it looks like.

 

[jimao22]

Hi,

I will reopen this topic because my observatory is not ready yet. What I did these days is something I wanted to do from a long time ago - is about a warm room near by my observatory.

This warm room is not a must, due to the fact I can control everything from inside the house. But you know how these things works - you need to be there, in the middle of the events, to have everything under  your supervision and if some other astronomers pay you a visit, you should have a proper place to meet them. This is where the warm room came to action. 

So, because I have some experience with my building and I am conservative, I made my new room from same materials I did the observatory - wooden frame and  thermal insulating panels. The materials were brand new this time (nothing recycled) and the cost was not very cheap. But not very expensive... 

First thing I did was to change the direction where the roof is traveling. At the moment I built the observatory, I was at the limit of my property. Mean while, I bought the backyard plot and I doubled my property so as a result, I was able to make this change in the project. It was a very important step and without it, I couldn't advance in this direction.

[jimao22]

This "small" change has brought about a lot of other problems to be solved. One of these was to swap the motor from one wall to the opposite one. Aparently is a trivial task, but it was a tremendous one. I do not tell you what problems I should solve because is not relevant for most of you. Anyway, at the end of this stage, the observatory it was looking like this.   

[jimao22]

We have a shortage of man power in Romania - a lot of workers are in Western Europe to work and is very hard to find someone to make hard labor around. So it took a long time till I found 2 brave men to help me pouring the slab for this new room. Basically, the workflow was almost the same as I did for the observatory - pouring the concrete slab, making a small cant made of bricks around the slab, ordering some steel coil "Z" shape to avoid water infiltration, making the wooden frame and cover everything with panels. 

I tried to use as much as possible the wooden beams used before as a support for the tracks, because these beams are strong and hard to remove. A small calculation led to the following result (money spent): 350£ for the panels, 110£ for the pvc door and window, 65£ the wood for the floor, 30£ for the wooden frame (I had most of them from some other projects, so no need to spent to much here), man power - 100£, assembly supplies - 20£. Not to much for a nice result, as you can see in the pictures bellow. 

[jimao22]

Sunday was a big day! 

I inaugurated the warm room (1), I made observation and shots to the trans-neptunian Huya asteroid occultation (visible from my observatory) and I made first test under the stars of my DIY Astrotrac type mount. It was a magic night, with clear sky, nice temperature and great results.

Speaking of my observatory, I brought the furniture inside, I changed the sensors of my alarm system on new position, I brought the new wood-stove  (which will be amazing on the next winter time) and pre-prepared the electrical installation. 

All is left to do is to connect everything on power, to install the window (I am waiting for my special glass - toughened double glazing anti-theft) and to move the desk and the computer in the new home. The old observatory room it will be only for my telescope and some tool boxes for DIY activities. 

The warm room is very nice and cosy and I can tell you is a great game changer, even if it won't look so.

The meteor camera is back on-line as well.