All Sky Camera/Weather Station V2.0

[Gina]

I don't understand that.  If the cooling fan is enclosed, how will it cool?  Surely it will just move warm air around in the enclosure.  Or am I missing something?

[angryowl]

11 minutes ago, Gina said:

I don't understand that.  If the cooling fan is enclosed, how will it cool?  Surely it will just move warm air around in the enclosure.  Or am I missing something?

Hopefully this shows what I mean better. The round hole at the top left of the enclosure will be used for air intake whilst the larger rectangular one at the lower right will be used for air expulsion via the cage fan seen mounted in a later image further down the page.

This will ventilate the enclosure air and the camera fan can then do its bit, obviously not as well as being in the outside in the open, but will still add some cooling I believe.

[Gina]

I see.  I have two points to make - sorry - those holes are too small and everything in that outer enclosure will suffer from damp/wet air in rain.  You will have a lot of heat to get rid of from my experience trying to do the same thing.  I've been using a large passive cooler for mine fully exposed to the elements as you've probably seen.  Works quite well in a breeze but less so on a calm day.  I've been thinking of fan assisted cooling but wondered if a fan would stand a damp atmosphere as they're designed to be used indoors.

[angryowl]

No need to be sorry, advice and criticism always welcome, especially from someone such as experienced as yourself.

Seeing as I want to stick to the same enclosure, an exposed passive cooler for the camera is a non-option for me atm. I realize that when enclosed, the CCD chip won’t get nearly as cold as it does in the open now and I can live with that. I suppose I could add a much more powerful fan, like a server fan, and enlarge the intake hole to help ventilate the enclosure better. But I suspect such a fan will need to have a rather high static pressure and those are always very loud and not sure what my neighbours would think of that.

[Gina]

Cooling is certainly a problem and something I have put quite a lot of thought into and still thinking and researching.  I think I'll start a new thread on just this topic.  I have experience of Peltier cooling for a number of things, going back the DSLRs several years ago.

[angryowl]

1 minute ago, Gina said:

Cooling is certainly a problem and something I have put quite a lot of thought into and still thinking and researching.  I think I'll start a new thread on just this topic.  I have experience of Peltier cooling for a number of things, going back the DSLRs several years ago.

If you do start a thread dedicated to cooling, I'd be the first to follow with utmost interest as throughout most of my DIY projects, airflow and cooling have been perhaps some of the most difficult aspects to get right.

[Gina]

Thread started ?