Arduino Focus control and Cloud sensor

[yesyes]

That would be cool, just had a thought perhaps the LDR could be used to switch on and off the graphing and logging, after all we are interested in what happens when its dark.

That was more or less why I included the LDR. During the day the sun might shine on the Melexis sensor causing a greater temperature difference that might be wrongly interpreted as clear sky. So the LDR is used (or better: will be used) to disable cloud detection when the value read from the LDR is 200 or more.

[Gina]

yesyes, I have. ;-)

It's the simplest part of the whole weather station...

It's a 10k LDR connected exactly as Neil described a few posts up...

I'm using a photo-voltaic cell (ex-garden path light) feeding an A/D (1-wire) for my weather station light level sensor. Testing showed this to have a very wide and uniform photo response.

[ncjunk]

I have just done a quick circuit with the LDR and a 10K resister (with some code from the Arduino forum George sent me) and it works perfectly.

No calibration done, so the Lux reading is probably out but it is perfect for what I want. I´ll add in some options to turn off graphs etc....well first I´ll add in a simple Lux display...only doing stuff when I get a spare half hour.

Photo voltaic cell?? cor thats a bit too high tech for me! just give me my LDR and a 10k resister and I´m happy ;-D

By the way the cows on your website look lovely!....now there are Goats!...oh dear....must stop watching..

[ncjunk]

The Goats have now gone....I know you were all worried.

[George]

The Goats have now gone....I know you were all worried.

You been on the sangria ?

[Gina]

Photo voltaic cell?? cor thats a bit too high tech for me! just give me my LDR and a 10k resister and I´m happy ;-D

Simple really, you know those garden lights with a solar panel on the top and a LED underneath, where the top panel charges a battery during daylight and runs the light at night. Well, that solar panel is called a "photo-voltaic cell". It produces up to 2.5v in sunlight.

By the way the cows on your website look lovely!....now there are Goats!...oh dear....must stop watching..

Ha ha The cows belong to the farmer next door, goats, cats, dog and chicken are ours.

[ncjunk]

No, Ginas weather page....there are cows!

[Gina]

Watching a rainbow right now And by coincidence the local radio is playing "Somewhere Over The Rainbow"

[George]

My other Arduino mega arrived yesterday so the clone will go on focuser only duties and the new one for other aspects of the project, as this is the same as Neils mega my pinouts should now be the same

Any luck with the adding the LDR code yet Neil?

Hopefully this afternoon I'll add the LDR circuit to my hardware build

[ncjunk]

Yesish...I have it working but have been testing stuff for yesyes, who has come up with some improvements in the focus control software.

I have just found my solder so can finish off my IR/LDR box this evening and add in the LDR code as well. I plan on mounting it all for this week and testing the data I get back.

[George]

Great stuff

Lunch then solder, Im planning on adding the sensor to my weather station mast and if it stops raining will be done this afternoon.

That leaves the rain sensor, did you ever have a play with that one I sent you? Think ASCOM have added some warning protocols to the standard which can be used by cloud/rain sensors to automatically park mounts and close domes/roofs.

When we have all this done we can play with EQ6 belt mods

[ncjunk]

No, I have done nothing with the rain sensor but I have a 555 timer waiting in order to create a frequency generator based on the capacitance variation of the rain sensor...

I think I can just about squeeze in the rain sensor into the IR box.

[George]

Funnily enough I have a 555 timer left over from a dew controller build

[ncjunk]

A quick pic of the ir and light sensor box....just dont look at the birdsnest inside!

[yesyes]

Oh come on... show us the bird nest...

[George]

Here's a screenshot of Neil's latest software release for the SGL Cloud/lux sensor project.

This is a scrrengrab just after sunset and shows a nice steady downward curve on the light level (lux) graph.

[Steve25]

This arrived today. Managed to source them from France.

They have capacitive sensing for rain but also have a thermister for temp, and heater to dry the sensor to keep it from dewing and giving false alarms.

I think they are the same as what AAG and Aurora use on their devices.

Will be adding it to the existing IR, LDR (as per ones in this thread) and 1-wire temp sensor for ambient readings I already have hooked up.

I also have put together my own VB code to read and graph these with some help from Neil's code (thanks Neil C)

Will keep you posted.

Steve

[ncjunk]

Steve,

do you know anything about VB 2010 Settings...the settings where you can add a user or project variable which is accessed in the code using My.Settings.xxxx

?

I can´t seem to get it to work properly using .net 3.5 references (.net 4.0 is not supported with Ascom). It always throws a error stating it requires System version 4.0.0.0.0.....which is a .net 4.0 reference (all references in the project are to 3.5 though). It is making no sense as I believe the My.Settings should work using the .net 3.5 framework as well.

I have the same or similar rain sensor....struggling with the above code problem at the moment though.

[Steve25]

Neil,

I am using .NET 4.0 so not had any issues. I will try .NET 3.5 and let you know.

Steve

[ncjunk]

Its when running as a driver dll for ascom, not as an exe. I even just created a new focuser driver using an ascom template and only added 1 new setting and a command to save it (only addition to the template) and still throws the same error. I'm confused, it must be something stupid.

[Euan]

This arrived today. Managed to source them from France.

[ATTACH]69904[/ATTACH] [ATTACH]69905[/ATTACH]

They have capacitive sensing for rain but also have a thermister for temp, and heater to dry the sensor to keep it from dewing and giving false alarms.

I think they are the same as what AAG and Aurora use on their devices.

Will be adding it to the existing IR, LDR (as per ones in this thread) and 1-wire temp sensor for ambient readings I already have hooked up.

I also have put together my own VB code to read and graph these with some help from Neil's code (thanks Neil C)

Will keep you posted.

Steve

Yip, that's the Aurora one. When it's heated its great, rain drops evaporate pretty quickly so you get a good reading of current rainfall

[ncjunk]

Just a quick update...

The Ascom Focus control software is being updated as we speak, quite excited about the new layout....sad isn't it!, but there are still a few software "features" to smooth out.

Reggie is spending a lot of time on that so thanks to him for all the help and hopefully a version will be posted in time for christmas!

The Cloud sensor hasn´t progressed so please send or post any requests for functionality you may have and I´ll start tweaking it. The next requirement for me would be an Alarm of some kind so I will start with that.

Regards

Neil C

[Euan]

Hi Neil,

Thanks for the update on the focuser, will try it out later. One thing I noticed from the current version is that whenever I connect to it in both Maxim and Focusmax, it launches two versions, of which only one can connect to the COM port at one time? I thought this used to work?

The reason is I use Focusmax for initial focus then Maxim does offsets for different filters

[NickH]

Indeed, good update

[ncjunk]

Euan,

The connection code is giving us some problems and you can only connect from one bit of software.

I'll try some old versions see if it ever worked.

We are still looking at the connection problem before posting a new version.

The new version has a keypad, absolute presets (press and it goes directly to that absolute preser), relative presets (preset value is copied to the keypad and you can then decide if you do a move in, move out or move to), backlash compensation and a new layout.

I'll talk to reggie and see if we can post a beta version for now.

Neil c