Allsky Camera, cutting the ribbon.

[Paul M]

For years I've wanted an allsky camera. Late last year I started putting a plan together and bought some bits.

I used my existing Raspberry Pi 4 and ASI 178MC camera with the included 2.5mm lens.

I chose the prefabricated case from dewcontrol.com, along with the 2.9" acrylic dome and heater element. The case blurb says it will house a Raspberry Pi, but at the time my Pi was out of town so I took their word for it. The Pi does ft, but not with any leads connected.

Plan A was to run it via PoE, but no room for a Pi and PoE splitter in the box, let alone the SSD I also wanted to use.

Plan B was to house only the camera in the enclosure, and run a long USB vable and 12v heater supply back indoors. My intended siting for the camera eventually precluded those ideas.

Plan C was to go back to PoE but replace the case. That's where I ended up. With the SSD, and Pi cooking away, I'm not expecting to need the heater element. It's there ready and waiting, just needs connecting.

It's been a mash up, with some of my worst brain work, ever. Unfortunately it's been one of the worst years of my life. With the loss of the mother-in-law in mid-February, that wasn't foreseen as recently as December. I've picked and poked at this project as an attempted distraction. 

Anyway, after the enforced layoff, we're finally back at our Luxury Cumbrian Villa, where the camera is intended to be sited. Even the simple job of connecting the PoE injector proved difficult today. It's been on soak test at home for a week or so. But got it up here, routed a cable made off the RJ45 plugs, and nothing worked. I brought it back inside to test on a proper supply and all was well. I remade the connectors (eyes aren't what they used to be) just in case. Still no good. Then I noticed that I'd plugged the Ethernet cables into the wrong in/out sides of the injector. A great way to burn off a spare hour or so!

The case still needs siting, it's just sat outside after finally getting the dome bonded and weather proof. A bit more soak testing while I work out how to get it past the MB! 🤣

Anyway, here it is, the first published image from the world's first "Paulsky" camera. Looks familiar? 

With imagination, you can seen the Milky-way arching across the image, the stars!! Just look at those stars...

 

[Paul M]

Here is a timelapse from dawn yesterday to dawn today. It was just sat on a shed awaiting proper mounting. Some real stars in this one.

Now, I know anyone arriving in this hobby since last June may might not have seen any stars yet. So this will particularly exciting for them... the best 134 seconds of their life.

Today, before heading back home, I fixed it to a corner of the Luxury Cumbroan Villa to give it a whole sky view

The wayward cable will be rerouted if this location works. But there are some tall and overhanging trees just over your right shoulder as you look at this. Maybe a bummer.

[Paul M]

Stars! Lots of stars!

Got some tweaking to do. But need more dark sky. It seems my rushed mounting of the camera today had me get it 90 deg of the orientation I'd intended. I wanted the North/South line along the long axis (ASI178 doesn't get the whole image circle). It'll be next week before I can turn it. Software tweaks are via RealVNC, so doable anytime.

I'm having trouble with my RasPi 5 which also lives remotely. It was acting as a server for my other general surveillance IP cameras and was going to be serving the images from the Allsky Pi. Unfortunately, I can't get RealVNC running on a Pi5 running Ubuntu (known issue) so installed Bookworm (Ras Pi native language) but, and thrice but, Agent DVR doesn't run in Bookworm (known issue). So I've left it with Bookworm and RealVNC so I might trouble shoot that remotely, though it's unlikely. People more competent than me have thrown the towel in. RealVNC are working on a fix for Ubuntu/Wayland but it's flawed and flakey just now.

Not to worry, I've got a couple of N100 mini PC winging their way to me. One of those will do the server job up there nicely! Windows, I hate that it just works...

 

[Paul M]

 Tonight I got my first meteor. And an impressive meteor too! Im still playing with settings but i don't think I'm far off now.

North is to the left, the bright lights of Penrith bleaching the horizon.

 

 

[happy-kat]

That's a corker capture and nice focus on your allsky stars

[Tomatobro]

Looking at the exposure time and recording time if yours is GMT then this could be a match as ours is tagged with UTC

https://archive.ukmeteors.co.uk/reports/2024/orbits/202404/20240409/20240409_225146.475_UK/index.html

[Paul M]

1 hour ago, Tomatobro said:

Looking at the exposure time and recording time if yours is GMT then this could be a match as ours is tagged with UTC

https://archive.ukmeteors.co.uk/reports/2024/orbits/202404/20240409/20240409_225146.475_UK/index.html

Yes I think that's the one. Only just realised the PaulSky camera is very unscientifically running on local/BST. So my capture was at 22:51:39 Zulu.

I'll change that, at some point when I get sat comfortably.

[Paul M]

2 hours ago, happy-kat said:

That's a corker capture and nice focus on your allsky stars

Thanks. It took some time getting there!

I'm playing with the binning at the moment and that shot was in 1x1 so very sharp. The images binned 2x2 (by the camera) are brighter and a bit prettier, particularly in the timelaps, but don't look so good on larger screens. The stars having distinct discs.

[Paul M]

Another first for the PaulSky Camera tonight, a short burst of Aurora, either that or the reactor's alight....

The forecast has a broad but not highly intense Auroral Oval oval for the period so it certainly looks like it. Other frames, though not as intense, show more definite rays.

North is to the left. The red at the 8 o'clock moved around and spread over 20 minutes or so and faded.

 

[Paul M]

In the cold light of day, I now have the overnight timelapse. It runs dawn to dawn and the PaullSky Pi then FTP's it to another Mini PC ( a cute little N100 from Chineshire) that came with W11 but got retrofitted with Ubuntu (I'm done with headless PC's balking at Microsofts demands). That machine is the server for my other survelance cameras via AgentDVR, I can VNC into both Pi and PC should I need to but Agent drills through the portforwarding and dynamic IP malarky and gives me a lovely screen showing the normal camera's live view, the latest frame from the PaulSky camera and the current dawn to dawn Paulsky Timelapse. Until I find a way to lash it up differently, the MP4 just plays contininuously. I can download the the file to my home PC for editing such as below where I've trimmed the timelaps to show the overnight period only. You'll see the ickle aurora at the 8 o'clock position at around the 23:00 mark. 

 

 

 

[Paul M]

Tonight's Aurora forecast is better than last night's and the weather is forecast to be clearer. So I'm hoping to get some more late season, Moonlit aurora.

[happy-kat]

Hope you get clear windows I just looked at the aurora alert and it's red now

[Paul M]

There is quite an aurora going on right now. Probably drowned out by moonlight for visual observers but might be worth a punt with a camera.:

[Paul M]

Interestingly, the image colour balance has just been going haywire as I'm watching the Aurora. It's gone green. I suspect the red of the aurora has tipped the auto white balance!

So, as this is a learning curve I just turned auto white balance off and re-booted the PaulSky Pi.

Hopefully not ruined the time-lapse. Actually the white balance losing the plot probably already has done...

[Paul M]

Here is the overnight timelapse. It shows the aurora nicely. As already noted, the red aurora upset the white balance. So that's no longer in auto.

I seem to have a condensation bloom there too. I'm back on site at the weekend so might look at connecting the dew heater. It's been wet oop north so the whole thing might be awash inside the case!

Just a shame that the Great Glowing Cheeseball ruined a nice aurora.

 

 

 

 

[Skipper Billy]

On 29/03/2024 at 23:37, Paul M said:

(ASI178 doesn't get the whole image circle)

It can give a full 360 degree image with the right lens - this is the same camera as yours but with a 1.55mm FL lens at F2. 

https://www.davidbanksastro.com/all-sky-camera

[Paul M]

1 hour ago, Skipper Billy said:

It can give a full 360 degree image with the right lens - this is the same camera as yours but with a 1.55mm FL lens at F2. 

https://www.davidbanksastro.com/all-sky-camera

That's an excellent build you have there David. I've been thinking about changing the lense but wanted to see how I got on with the kit lens included with ASI178 first. It is quite a crop on the short axis and already annoying me! Getting a true 180deg view would be nice and make it more practical to then record only a square ROI and put the N/S axis in the vertical. 

Thanks for the lens suggestion. I will very likely source one in the near future. 

I'm very interested the focusing solution you have too. Not too worried about auto focus or ASCOM drivers. I could just have a little routine on the Pi to manually drive the focus on demand, rack o'th'eye, though focus seems quite stable as is. 

This Allsky camera is the most fun I've had with gadgets for a long time so it's only right to continue tinkering. I'll probably build a website too... someday

 

[Paul M]

In a land far, far away, Cumbria to be exact, there is a pristine clear sky.

I'm not there to witness it, but the Paulsky Camera is!

While flicking through the images, I spotted a nice meteor. So here is that frame. It'll be lost as a sub-second flash in the overnight time-lapse.

Cloud and moonlight have been blighting the Allsky Camera recently but it's improving again, maybe a window of opportunity before the all-night-twilight sets in.

The Great Glowing Cheesball is just starting  to affect the camera now. So, it's downhill for the rest of the night...

 

In other news, emboldened by @Skipper Billy's Allsky camera linked to above, I've ordered a lens that will fit the whole image circle on the ASI 178 sensor. So a full 180deg view. That and I've ordered a much bigger dome. Again, Skipper Billy suggested that on his website as it allows ventilation holes to be drilled around the camera, allowing the very warm air from the RasPi to circulate in the dome, hopefully keeping it condensation free.

There is a newly released firmware (EEPROM) for the Raspi, which allows even greater overclocking. I can't dream of taking the enclosed Pi to the max but I still had the original firmware on my Pi 4B which limited the CPU to 1.5 MHz, I've now set it to 2.0 Mhz. It might, and probably will cook in the summer. So I'll likely stop recording daytime images and just let it idle in the heat of the day. I'm looking to swap the Pi4 for my Pi5 to limit some of the issues with image handling. I tried at the weekend but it balked at boot-up, complaining of voltage drop. Thinking about it, the PoE splitter is only rated at 2A, so I've got a higher rated one on order. The PoE injector is a big 8 channel PoE switch rated at 85w total load. It is also running 2 x PoE surveillance cameras, but I'm confident that total load will be compliant.

That'll be an ongoing project into the summer, due to my limited opportunities to get up there once the parts arrive.

[John_D]

Fascinating reading thank you. It's something I've thought about several times but not quite got round to ( the usual story 😁 ) A couple of questions if I may:

1. Do you use any software to detect meteor trails or do you have to manually look through every image?

2. How reliable is the POE at higher currents? Is it better than using say wi-fi and a small local power supply ( apologies if there are design decisions for this in earlier posts that I've missed )

[Paul M]

13 minutes ago, John_D said:

Fascinating reading thank you. It's something I've thought about several times but not quite got round to ( the usual story 😁 ) A couple of questions if I may:

1. Do you use any software to detect meteor trails or do you have to manually look through every image?

2. How reliable is the POE at higher currents? Is it better than using say wi-fi and a small local power supply ( apologies if there are design decisions for this in earlier posts that I've missed )

The software I use is Raspberry Pi specific: https://github.com/AllskyTeam/allsky

It's quite comprehensive, very configurable - to the point of taking your life over!  And does have a meteor detection module/plugin that's still experimental. I haven't used it. As you'll see from the full night timelapse below, the camera is sited under a busy flight path of Transatlantic and domestic flights. There are multiple satellite flares there too. So I suspect it might be hard work training software to pick out meteors from all the noise. I could be wrong

The PoE is stable, but as noted above, getting the right gear is important. The current Pi 4 reports the odd "under volt" when it's busy, such as when it's crunching the images to make the timelapse. I've already upgraded the PoE switch that supplies the power and I'm going to replace the splitter for a higher rated one. 

I had some teething problems initially, long period connection drop-outs but not loss of power. It turned out that the Pi was connecting via WiFi, which is a bit flakey in that spot - outside an aluminium caravan! The Pi was set to prioritise WiFi over Ethernet. Now corrected that but still have the WiFi connected as back up. The Pi has crashed to unstable states a couple of times, VNC not connecting so unable to go in and fix it, but did have SSH. A bit complex really. I have a mini PC on site also. That lives inside. I can VNC into that then SSH to the Pi to reboot it. That's mostly just a hazard of remote computers, not particularly PoE, and it's rare. PoE has been better than I'd expected. It's not a very long run and only Cat5 cable, maybe 20mts. I do have all the bits to run power and ethernet separately or even just have the camera on its own via a long USB 3 cable. None of that was needed.

Anyway, last night was very clear oop north.

 

 

 

 

[John_D]

Thanks for the info. Yes, I can see that plane lights could be an issue. The ASICap software from ZWO that I use has a meteor capture mode but I haven't tried it yet because I've missed all the well known meteor showers due to cloud. Maybe I should just point it at the sky the next clear night and see what it makes of aircraft or satellite trails.

[Paul M]

The first half of last night was very clear again. However, there appears to be a fly in ointment. See if you can spot when the neighbour puts his not-very-bright outside light on when he lets his dog out for its bedtime business. Normally it on and off again but this is the third time since setting up the camera that it's been left on.

It's not the end of the world and I'm not going to even mention it to the neighbour. They, like many of us, have enough going on in their lives without being upset about something else, as they would be, upset that is. It's an old "low energy" compact fluorescent lamp that brightens over a few frames as it warms up. It was still on at 10am. We've left ours on, unintentionally, numerous times. 

I'll just move the camera so that the dome doesn't get direct glare. The illumination of the trees isn't a big problem, just the dome flaring that's killing it. No doubt there'll be more issues like this going forward. 

 

 

 

Edited Sunday at 17:44 by Paul M

[MarsG76]

Awesome...