New Raspberry PI night sky software

[Konkelo]

Hi!

My friend Jani made a program to Raspberry Pi to capture night sky events with cheap hardware.

Meteotux Pi creates a stacked images and it doesn't lose frames doing it. For example taking 10 minute image or even 1 hour image that has every frame camera has captured the time period.

There is 2 versions of program one is free and has image resolution max size 2592 x 1952 pixels. With HQ camera and pro version you can get stunning 4064 x 3040 pixels. The cost of PRO version is 30€  (27£)

Check out his website here https://www.meteotuxpi.com

Here's one image with bright meteor taken from my DIY all sky camera with Raspberry Pi and HQ camera. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1zPUMY6VifSRwnt_gAr31yJHliqHsorbJ/view

Equipment cost was:
HQ camera 53£
raspberry pi zero w 9£
32gb micro sd card 17.5£
power adapter 9£
Acryl dome 18£
PVC pipe 9£

Total cost 115£

Cheers!
Konkelo
 

Edited October 18, 2020 by Konkelo

[bottletopburly]

excellent ,i down loaded the original before never got round to sorting this version this is better as it supports pi4 .

[pete_l]

Good stuff!
Here's a "first light" sample taken from my Pi4 with the 8MPix camera IMX219 sensor + 160° lens. Sky conditions are 100% clear, SQM=19.6 with the Moon rising imminently

The view is straight up. North to the top of the image. The summer triangle is to the left, Deneb / Cygnus the higher point. Vega in the centre and the trapezium of Hercules off to the right.
The red blob is my WiMax internet parabola. The light along the left side is from my sound-activated security light, which comes on when the wind blows and it *is* gusty tonight

The parameters to meteotux_pi are: ./meteotux_pi -d 120 -e 2000  --verbose

The --verbose option reports camera settings typically as:

AWB Red       =1.67
AWB Blue      =1.71
Exposure      =1999983
Analog gain   =7.53
Digital gain  =10.00

 

Edited September 4, 2020 by pete_l

[adyj1]

5 minutes ago, pete_l said:

Here's a "first light" sample taken from my Pi4 with the 8MPix 160° camera

Looks good. Which Pi camera is that? 

[pete_l]

IMX219 (I've just added that to the text)

[pete_l]

For reference, this is what a 6 second image from raspistill looks like.

I've used the same values for digital and analog gain that meteotux produced (see above). Though this image is a single 6 second exposure, while the ones I took with meteotux were 60*2 second subs. The colour balance is different and there is a lot more noise. I find this camera produces a light band along the top with long exposures. Light leakage? Amp glow?

[Konkelo]

Hi everyone!

Nice image pete! And i'am really happy to see that you can use IMX219 Camera Modules too with Meteotux PI!

Here in Finland it was raining whole night. But still got some images with stars! I'am using Raspberry HQ camera.

Heres one image. Had to crop it from 4064 x 3040 to fit here   Link to original image

Cheers!

Konkelo

Edited September 5, 2020 by Konkelo

[Konkelo]

Hello!

I made a star trails video from images some nights ago taken with Meteotux PI

Link to video

Heres the last image from video. Image and video are cropped to 1024x768.

Cheers!

Edited September 6, 2020 by Konkelo

[Konkelo]

That looks like a meteor to me!  Original Full size is here Link to original

 

 

Cheers!

Edited September 12, 2020 by Konkelo

[Konkelo]

Hi! Here's some new videos i have made with raspberry pi + raspberry pi HQ camera + Meteotux PI stacked images. Light pollution is high here but still got some nice results 

Remember to check 1080p quality

Normal video

Star trails video

Meteotux PI settings on videos above are .meteotux_pi -d 30 -e 10000 -g 3 -v

Cheers!
Konkelo

Edited September 19, 2020 by Konkelo

[bokser01]

Hi, have you tried to use a meteotux from a removed IR filter on an HQ camera? Absolutely amazing results! I'm going to build a car camera on a raspberry pi + HQ camera and meteotux. I used to test raspistill 30s exposure with a 222 ° C lens without reduction just placed on the chip. Here is the result

Edited October 7, 2020 by bokser01

[Konkelo]

No i haven't. Will try it with my second HQ camera. Please post some images taken with Meteotux PI later when you make that setup and got some meteors etc.. 

Nice image!

Cheers!

Edited October 9, 2020 by Konkelo

[PlankWithANailIn]

Why would i use this software over this one?

https://www.instructables.com/Wireless-All-Sky-Camera/

Its 100% free and comes with a nice web interface and is open source and works with other cameras.

There's also a version for the HD camera.

https://github.com/RobboRob/allsky

By stacked images you mean converting an image sequence to time lapse video or star trails video?

Edited October 17, 2020 by PlankWithANailIn

[fozzybear]

On ‎04‎/‎09‎/‎2020 at 18:26, Konkelo said:

There is 2 versions of program one is free and has image resolution max size 2592 x 1952 pixels. With HQ camera and pro version you can get stunning 4064 x 3030 pixels. The cost of PRO version is 16,4£

I think it is 30 euro's  so where do you get 16,4£

[Konkelo]

13 hours ago, PlankWithANailIn said:

Why would i use this software over this one?

https://www.instructables.com/Wireless-All-Sky-Camera/

Its 100% free and comes with a nice web interface and is open source and works with other cameras.

There's also a version for the HD camera.

https://github.com/RobboRob/allsky

By stacked images you mean converting an image sequence to time lapse video or star trails video?

That software you found lose frames when capturing images. And looks like it needs a lot more time to install and get it to work compared to Meteotux PI when you only need that program and simply run it. But if you like to use web interface you should use it

And by stacked images  Meteotux PI does it automatically. Here is one example of 10 minute image stack. Original image here

Command:

 ./meteotux_pi_pro -d 600 -e 10000 -g 5

Cheers!

Edited October 18, 2020 by Konkelo

[Konkelo]

12 hours ago, fozzybear said:

I think it is 30 euro's  so where do you get 16,4£

Oh that was my typo

Cheers!

Edited October 18, 2020 by Konkelo

[Konkelo]

Last night i got same meteor with 2 Raspberry Pi cameras. First image is taken with Raspberry Pi V2 camera and second all sky image is with HQ camera. 

Meteotux Pi options used: V2 camera "./meteotuxpi -d 120 -e7000 -g4" and with HQ "./meteotuxpi -d60 -e10000 -g4"

Both images are cropped.

Cheers!

[bokser01]

 

I removed the IR filter from the lens and HQ of the camera. I'm sending the final photo, I think it's impressive :)

Edited October 23, 2020 by bokser01

[Konkelo]

Oh WOW really impressive! What Meteotux PI  options did you use?

Cheers!

[bokser01]

6 hours ago, Konkelo said:

Oh WOW opravdu působivé! Jaké možnosti Meteotux PI jste použili?

Na zdraví!

 

I used this setting: ./meteotux_pi_pro -d 120 -e 30000 -g 9 --drc high -v and ./meteotux_pi_pro -d 60 -e 60000 -g 11 --drc high -v

 

[Konkelo]

On 23/10/2020 at 19:00, bokser01 said:

Ok Thanks! So the -e 30000 and -e60000 is basically -e20000 (that's the max Meteotux PI can do with HQ camera) But that -g (gain) and the -d (stack duration) does the job here and looks good!

Cheers!

 

 

Edited October 24, 2020 by Konkelo

[7170]

On 17/10/2020 at 22:40, PlankWithANailIn said:

Why would i use this software over this one?

I’ve been using it for many years with my meteor camera. The old version was the only piece of software I could find (at the time) that got round issues of long delays with an office pi camera module so you had much more of a chance to capture meteors by stacking a continuous stream of images instead of one with massive gaps between each capture.
 

I recall taking a 6s exposure using other software would lock up the camera for ages (maybe even a minute if my memory serves me right).

If you are using something like a ZWO camera I would not use it, but if using a PI camera module it was is maybe with looking into still.

[bokser01]

 

I'm adding a photo of 48 photos each per minute of exposure. Edited and composed in the astrophoto program. The result is fascinating

 

[bokser01]

My first bolids in camera or meteotux

 

 

[han59]

@bokser01, your last two images look fake.