All Sky Camera/Weather Station build

[angryowl]

With much regret I'm saying this, the project is on hold(well it's up in the loft right now) as I simply don't have the time nor motivation to start tearing everything inside the case down then one by one trying troubleshooting steps. 

I'm a bit annoyed at this decision myself as I was really close to mounting it up and almost had the software part figured out. Oh well, it'll definitely be resurrected one day when the mood strikes me, but for the time being no more work will be done on it.

[Gina]

I'm in almost exactly the same position

[angryowl]

55 minutes ago, Gina said:

I'm in almost exactly the same position

Yeah I know, it sucks. When you're so close yet so far.

Come on Gina, get yours sorted and at least one of us will have one working 

[Gina]

I will before long.  I'm working on 3D printers at present.  Um, no not exactly - waiting for parts - mini marble machine ATM

[souls33k3r]

That's a darn shame Alex. Was really looking forward seeing to complete this beast mate.

Don't you worry, i know it's the lack of sun. Now that we have plenty of it, pop around my house for a delicious BBQ and let me reignite that flame in you

[angryowl]

2 hours ago, souls33k3r said:

That's a darn shame Alex. Was really looking forward seeing to complete this beast mate.

Don't you worry, i know it's the lack of sun. Now that we have plenty of it, pop around my house for a delicious BBQ and let me reignite that flame in you

Hehehe, Might take you up on that offer mate at some time. Does seem like the weather is improving quite a bit, was crystal clear last night!

[angryowl]

14 hours ago, Gina said:

I will before long.  I'm working on 3D printers at present.  Um, no not exactly - waiting for parts - mini marble machine ATM

I wish you all the luck with your build Gina. And yeah it seems like most of us here have un-astro related hobbies, one more interesting than the other!

[souls33k3r]

2 minutes ago, angryowl said:

Hehehe, Might take you up on that offer mate at some time. Does seem like the weather is improving quite a bit, was crystal clear last night!

Any time mate.

Was it? It must've been quite late as i remember around 10:30 it was still cloudy. 

[angryowl]

Just now, souls33k3r said:

Any time mate.

Was it? It must've been quite late as i remember around 10:30 it was still cloudy. 

Oh, can't really remember what time I took a peak outside and it was beautiful, definitely later than 10:30 I think. Of course as per the usual I couldn't be bothered to setup so just had an early night  

[souls33k3r]

Just now, angryowl said:

Oh, can't really remember what time I took a peak outside and it was beautiful, definitely later than 10:30 I think. Of course as per the usual I couldn't be bothered to setup so just had an early night  

Tonight is looking good so far, a little bit hazy but lets see how it goes. I don't know if i should use my SCT or the refractor tonight but i'm hoping to leave work early'ish and be ready. 

[angryowl]

2 minutes ago, souls33k3r said:

Tonight is looking good so far, a little bit hazy but lets see how it goes. I don't know if i should use my SCT or the refractor tonight but i'm hoping to leave work early'ish and be ready. 

Well, could try the frac and test cable management and balancing or could go with the C8 on some nice galaxies?

[souls33k3r]

1 minute ago, angryowl said:

Well, could try the frac and test cable management and balancing or could go with the C8 on some nice galaxies?

Yeah could do but first things first, i need to be bothered first  which i'm sure i will have to because if i don't, my wife will tell me EXACTLY how much i've spent on this kit for it not to be used lol . Any who, i don't want to distract this topic. As you were sir

[angryowl]

My new weather station...

[angryowl]

The time has finally come to resurrect this project and I have taken it down from the loft a few weeks ago and been doing some final changes and modifications since then. Surprisingly the issue I had with the mini PC rebooting itself has completely vanished and it can run for days without any issues now. I'm completely baffled by this and although I would like to know what caused the issue in the first place, I probably will just leave it alone as I don't really fancy messing about with it at this point.

Some of the things done:

• calibration of the LDR with a commercial LUX meter to record a rudimentary LUX value

• wind speed and direction are now averaged over a period of 3 seconds

• wind gust and rain gauge code

• improved speed and performance and general tidying up of both Mega and Visual Basic code. The app loads and runs much faster now

• and many other small changes in code, such as sorting bugs and adding features

One thing I did before taking it down from the loft was calculating an approximation of the temperature rise in the enclosure during hot summer days. The reasoning behind this is that PLA has a glass transition temperature of roughly 60 to 65 degrees Celsius at which point it starts to become malleable and could prove disastrous as all printed parts inside the enclosure are PLA. Turns out that even on a day with an ambient temperature of about 35 degrees Celsius and direct sunlight hitting the aluminium enclosure, the cage fan I'm using should be enough to keep the temperature inside below 40 degrees Celsius. This is with the camera TEC at full power and the mini PC which also add a few watts of heat dissipated inside the enclosure. Based on these results I can now relax knowing that even on the hottest summer day my PLA should be fine and I don't need to think about re printing the parts in ASA or ABS.

Hoping that today I can clean up the insides of the enclosure a bit and finally screw in the lid then do some quick tests of all functions and if all goes well, I plan on having the entire thing on the mast by the end of this week. Even though most of the graphs for daily, weekly and monthly values have not been completed, I'd like to start recording some raw data and see how the sensors behave which'll hopefully give me a much better idea on the structure the graphs need.

[angryowl]

Sadly, since my last post, just before mounting the enclosure up the pole, the camera stopped working due to what I can only assume to be either a short or voltage surge on its USB control board inside the camera. The TEC and Fan still work as they are on a separate circuit, but the camera is no longer detected by the PC. For the past two weeks or so I have been trying to get it working, but upon closer inspection of some of the components close to a GND trace on the main CCD board appear to have been burnt or shorted. They're some SMD caps and inductors and managed to find and replace them with close values ones but no luck with getting the camera to be recognised.

I'll take this opportunity to give a massive thanks to George from Opticstar support for sending me a spare USB control board for the camera for no charge other than the potage. Initially I thought that would get the camera working again but I now realise that identifying and repairing the issue on the complex CCD board is completely beyond my simple electronics abilities.

I've put a lot of time and effort into both the hardware and software side of this project to just abandon it, but the death of the camera had tempted me a few times to just give up but have decided against it and will be continuing with this but with a substantially different approach that I think is worth its own thread.

[Gina]

You have my sympathy!!  I lost the camera in my ASC a while back in a violent storm.  It was a £300 camera and I can't afford to replace it.

[AngryDonkey]

Sorry to hear of your setback! Hopefully you will find a way forward, would be a shame to abandon it now. There is a lot of great stuff in this thread!

[angryowl]

35 minutes ago, Gina said:

You have my sympathy!!  I lost the camera in my ASC a while back in a violent storm.  It was a £300 camera and I can't afford to replace it.

Hi Gina,

I was actually reading up on your Ultimate ASC thread a couple of days ago and saw that. Awful news and it's gutting when it happens, especially with such expensive kit. I know you're working on identifying the SMD component and replacing it and I wish you all the good luck and really hope you get it working again.

[angryowl]

17 minutes ago, AngryDonkey said:

Sorry to hear of your setback! Hopefully you will find a way forward, would be a shame to abandon it now. There is a lot of great stuff in this thread!

Thanks, after a lot of thought I decided to go ahead with the project and will actually be adding some more features which I always wanted.