Raspberry Pi AllSky Camera

[jiberjaber]

21 minutes ago, wormix said:

That’s better!

Hmmm - must be when I copy the image from the browser rather than use the snipping tool... 

[Mognet]

Had a little oddity happen overnight. The daytime images from yesterday didn't get deleted so the daytime video covers both days. First time I've seen that happen, so must just be a little timing issue

[wormix]

That’s strange - same thing happened for me, I just assumed it was because I had been tinkering with it and missed the delete step. 
 

perhaps something funny happening with sunwait?

[Mognet]

I hadn't tinkered with mine, just been in to look at a few things. I'm assuming it's sunwait too.

It's been running constantly for a week without problem, so I'll see how it behaves tomorrow

[jiberjaber]

On 05/07/2020 at 15:44, Mognet said:

Had a little oddity happen overnight. The daytime images from yesterday didn't get deleted so the daytime video covers both days. First time I've seen that happen, so must just be a little timing issue

Same here - yesterday's (Monday) and today's. Not checked Sunday yet (I back up all the pics and videos, not sure why I think I had some grand plan for a historic viewing capability!) 

ETA - it's been a month since I last rsync'ed the camera's backup, this might take a while LOL

Edited July 7, 2020 by jiberjaber

[Mognet]

I now have several days worth concatenated, but curiously not the night ones. The code is all there to remove the old videos but it doesn't seem to do anything at the moment. Haven't checked the cron job itself yet. Could be a timing issue where it's deleting the day mp4 just after concatenating it into the updated one

[wormix]

Mine has returned to normal now - did have an issue with file size as I was using the buffer grabs so I had the banner text in video - those files are significantly smaller so have now reverted back to the original image 

[jiberjaber]

34 minutes ago, wormix said:

Mine has returned to normal now - did have an issue with file size as I was using the buffer grabs so I had the banner text in video - those files are significantly smaller so have now reverted back to the original image 

File size as in teh movie size or the deleting based on file size? (that rm statement is littered through all the scripts) 

[wormix]

Just image size, Didn’t check movie size but wondered if that could have had an impact. I did comment out the deletion lines but as you say, there are a few so may have missed the pertinent one. 

[jiberjaber]

Hmmm - <insert Big Brother geordie voice over> "day 3 in the lockdown household of Jiberjaber..." and we still have a concatenated daytime movie! Where as the night time video is still working as expected... will have to investigate I think..

 

[Mognet]

I did a remote reboot last night and that cured it. Well, probably cured it. The daytime video wasn't available afterwards and when I checked this morning it was only images from today, so it looks like it cleared out the offending files and sorted itself out. We'll see tomorrow if the problem comes back.

[Mognet]

More oddness. After the reboot things seemed to be better but now have yesterdays daytime video as the night video. I'm sure I checked the night video after a couple of hours too.

Time to refresh the code and investigate. Might be something I've done by accident while looking at the code

[jiberjaber]

Well I looked through the scripts and nothing has changed other than the commented out bit to delete short clips.  I think this is either:

1. something to do with the cron sequence interaction (i.e. something is also happening at the same time as the cron is executing the newmovie script)

2. a permissions issue where something isn't getting actioned (perhaps removal of the old movie before concatenation?) 

Given it's been working OK for sometime and now started a common issue (3 of us reporting the same issue now) I don't think its permissions - more likely 1, to be a clash of timing somewhere ?  

[wormix]

I have mine switched off at the mo whilst I await parts for the enclosure. I will restart it later and leave running to see if I encounter the same issue again. 
 

I did wonder if it were location based as all three of us are at a similar latitude I believe (Herts & 2 x Essex)

[Mognet]

We're pretty close geographically, and I suspect we all have very similar sunrise and sunset times. I think Jason is only ten miles or so from me so ours will be almost identical

I've put mine up in the spare room window as I don't have all the parts for outdoor placement yet, and my 3D printer is being awkward about printing things at the moment

[wormix]

Set up last night and the night and day videos have deleted and started fine so far. Night video was only 25 seconds long however so I must have missed a delete script somewhere. 
 

Will leave running for a few days to see if it’s stable. 

[Mognet]

That's the usual length for my night videos at the moment, and daytime it's 1min22 ish. Not checked if they are the correct lengths for my capture settings. I've set it to 1 minute for daytime and 2 minutes for nighttime, and then set the video compile to once every fifteen minutes

[wormix]

Quick update - still running fine, videos being deleted as appropriate and rerunning ok. 
 

Worth noting I have reverted back to the original code where the video is made up from the image file rather than the buffer (ie I don’t now have the text banner displayed in the video) 

 

Also to update - this project has just got far more expensive as I bought a 3D printer!  The friend I had making my camera holder mentioned he was considering selling his Ender 3 Pro so I enquired and at £80 I thought why not!

[jiberjaber]

1 hour ago, wormix said:

Quick update - still running fine, videos being deleted as appropriate and rerunning ok. 
 

Worth noting I have reverted back to the original code where the video is made up from the image file rather than the buffer (ie I don’t now have the text banner displayed in the video) 

 

Also to update - this project has just got far more expensive as I bought a 3D printer!  The friend I had making my camera holder mentioned he was considering selling his Ender 3 Pro so I enquired and at £80 I thought why not!

Slippery slope!  

 

[Mognet]

Definitely a slippery slope! But £80 for an Ender 3 Pro is a bargain. That's about a third of their current retail price

I used mine to print out my own design case this week. It's going in the window for now until I have somewhere to mount it outdoors

[Mognet]

Has anyone seen an issue where no images are taken for the last hour of night but the last taken image is still being added to the night video? I have a number of duplicated night images from 3am to 4am. It's the second night it's happened that I know of. Saturday night/sunday morning the image didn't change after 3am but was working again in the morning

I'm going to have a couple of debugging sessions. The day video not clearing and the sunset time display issue are on my list already. I know the basic causes, just need to identify fixes now

[jiberjaber]

7 minutes ago, Mognet said:

Has anyone seen an issue where no images are taken for the last hour of night but the last taken image is still being added to the night video? I have a number of duplicated night images from 3am to 4am. It's the second night it's happened that I know of. Saturday night/sunday morning the image didn't change after 3am but was working again in the morning

I'm going to have a couple of debugging sessions. The day video not clearing and the sunset time display issue are on my list already. I know the basic causes, just need to identify fixes now

I've just looked and I have the same issue, last image before 4AM was at 02:55 then this is added until another image is taken at 03:59 and the final frame is 04:02.  This is one of the reasons I switched to using the banner image.  I haven't been looking at the movies much so hadn't really noticed the issue at the end of the night movie.

The very long day video seems to have rectified itself now - so must have been a timing issue.

[Mognet]

I suspect at least one problem could be down to the file /home/allsky/daily having the text (midnight sun) in it. That's the cause of the sunset time in the image displaying something like 01VT04 instead of the proper sunset time

The daytime movie problem I think was purely down to timing and the change over being on the hour. I notice that when it resolved itself was when the daytime video was due to start at 04:02. And that means it's likely to happen again whenever the start is on the hour

Having the image time on the video could be useful if anything interesting is caught. Last night I got a bit of an ISS pass in the frame

[jiberjaber]

4 hours ago, Mognet said:

I suspect at least one problem could be down to the file /home/allsky/daily having the text (midnight sun) in it. That's the cause of the sunset time in the image displaying something like 01VT04 instead of the proper sunset time

The daytime movie problem I think was purely down to timing and the change over being on the hour. I notice that when it resolved itself was when the daytime video was due to start at 04:02. And that means it's likely to happen again whenever the start is on the hour

Having the image time on the video could be useful if anything interesting is caught. Last night I got a bit of an ISS pass in the frame

Yep -I captured ISS too. 

I think I did a fix for the issue regarding the strings being wrong out of sunwait when there is no astro dark... should be in this thread....

(perhaps I should get round to cloning the github and adding my alterations to it just in case I lose the device)

 

 

[jiberjaber]

See if this works for you..