Cheap All Sky camera project with Raspberry Pi

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c64
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Cheap All Sky camera project with Raspberry Pi

#1

Post by c64 »


Hello!

My friend Jani made a program to capture night sky events with cheap Raspberry Pi hardware. Now the program is ready and it supports all Raspberry Pi versions and camera modules.

So i build my first All Sky camera using Raspberry Pi 4 and 13.2 megapixels Raspberry Pi HQ camera with some 180° lens. With that setup i get images at stunning 4064x3040 pixels resolution.

My goal was to build fully automated high quality night sky / meteorite camera with temperature control inside dome.
Allsky1.png
After some days of testing with one Raspberry Pi 4 and Meteotux PI. I added a second Raspberry Pi 3+ and V2 color camera with relay controller and temperature sensor in same cover.
Brains01.png
Temperature is monitored inside dome and if weather gets cold relays turn heat resistors on. This is done with python script that runs on Raspberry Pi 3+.

Both Raspberry PI's run with Raspberry PI OS lite. They are automated to run Meteotux PI when sunset and stop when sunrise. This is done with basic Python script that uses Python3 suntime library.
Images are saved to ~/meteotuxpi/images/ and after images are ready at the morning they are moved to NAS storage with wlan+sftp for later processing etc.

Meteotux PI doesn't take videos but it generates stacked images that wont lose any frames captured directly from camera.

You can for example take one image in every 10 minutes, that one image then contains every single frame (from 0s to 10min) from the camera and program stacks them together in one image. And keep taking those whole night without losing any frames.Max duration of one image stack is 1 hour.

Here's one cropped 10 minute stack example taken with Raspberry Pi V2 camera module
MTX1_600s_e10000_g5_crop.jpg
Here's some meteorite images ive got so far :)
AllSky_20200816-224456UTC1024.png
AllSky_30_e6500_2020-09-11T19_02_42+00_00 (1).jpg
I've made some time lapse videos from stacked images too. You can check them from my youtube channel here https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCFWiNe ... affH1Mv1SA

I'm really happy with results so far and images can be compared even commercial All Sky cameras that can cost 10000$ and they cant do image stacking and lose frames :)

My setup above cost around 250$

Cheapest and smallest "travel model" build below cost 30$ that contains Raspberry Pi Zero W, V2 color camera with wild angle lens and DC/DC converter.
mini1.png
mini1.png (127.04 KiB) Viewed 11466 times
mini2.png
mini2.png (113.93 KiB) Viewed 11466 times
Now anyone interested in night sky events can build cheap and simple system with Raspberry Pi and Meteotux PI

You can find Meteotux PI from https://www.meteotuxpi.com

Cheers!
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Re: Cheap All Sky camera project with Raspberry Pi

#2

Post by yobbo89 »


Very nice, i like it. Cheers for the post .
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Re: Cheap All Sky camera project with Raspberry Pi

#3

Post by Makuser »


Hi c64. Those are great images and looks to be a fun project for low money. Thanks for your post c64 and welcome to the TSS forum.
:text-welcomeconfetti:
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Re: Cheap All Sky camera project with Raspberry Pi

#4

Post by turboscrew »


c64 wrote: Fri Oct 02, 2020 12:35 pm Hello!

My friend Jani made a program to capture night sky events with cheap Raspberry Pi hardware. Now the program is ready and it supports all Raspberry Pi versions and camera modules.

So i build my first All Sky camera using Raspberry Pi 4 and 13.2 megapixels Raspberry Pi HQ camera with some 180° lens. With that setup i get images at stunning 4064x3040 pixels resolution.

My goal was to build fully automated high quality night sky / meteorite camera with temperature control inside dome.

Image

After some days of testing with one Raspberry Pi 4 and Meteotux PI. I added a second Raspberry Pi 3+ and V2 color camera with relay controller and temperature sensor in same cover.

Image

Temperature is monitored inside dome and if weather gets cold relays turn heat resistors on. This is done with python script that runs on Raspberry Pi 3+.

Both Raspberry PI's run with Raspberry PI OS lite. They are automated to run Meteotux PI when sunset and stop when sunrise. This is done with basic Python script that uses Python3 suntime library.
Images are saved to ~/meteotuxpi/images/ and after images are ready at the morning they are moved to NAS storage with wlan+sftp for later processing etc.

Meteotux PI doesn't take videos but it generates stacked images that wont lose any frames captured directly from camera.

You can for example take one image in every 10 minutes, that one image then contains every single frame (from 0s to 10min) from the camera and program stacks them together in one image. And keep taking those whole night without losing any frames.Max duration of one image stack is 1 hour.

Here's one cropped 10 minute stack example taken with Raspberry Pi V2 camera module

Image

Here's some meteorite images ive got so far :)

Image
Image

I've made some time lapse videos from stacked images too. You can check them from my youtube channel here https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCFWiNe ... affH1Mv1SA

I'm really happy with results so far and images can be compared even commercial All Sky cameras that can cost 10000$ and they cant do image stacking and lose frames :)

My setup above cost around 250$

Cheapest and smallest "travel model" build below cost 30$ that contains Raspberry Pi Zero W, V2 color camera with wild angle lens and DC/DC converter.
Image Image

Now anyone interested in night sky events can build cheap and simple system with Raspberry Pi and Meteotux PI

You can find Meteotux PI from https://www.meteotuxpi.com

Cheers!
Nice gadget!
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Re: Cheap All Sky camera project with Raspberry Pi

#5

Post by Chich »


Thanks for the info. This a project on my list of to-dos. I have the Pi, camera and dome but am still looking for an appropriate spot to mount it. One of these days..... :)
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Re: Cheap All Sky camera project with Raspberry Pi

#6

Post by Peter802 »


Thank you for sharing this interesting project.
Wishing you every success.
Clear Skies.
Regards,

Peter
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Re: Cheap All Sky camera project with Raspberry Pi

#7

Post by Greenman »


This is interesting, do you mind if the information is shared, I may know of some interested parties.
Cheers,

Tony.

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Re: Cheap All Sky camera project with Raspberry Pi

#8

Post by c64 »


turboscrew wrote: Mon Oct 05, 2020 8:20 pm Nice gadget!
Does your nick come from a certain computer?
Yes your right :)
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Re: Cheap All Sky camera project with Raspberry Pi

#9

Post by c64 »


Greenman wrote: Tue Oct 06, 2020 11:33 am This is interesting, do you mind if the information is shared, I may know of some interested parties.
No problem that's why i posted it here so people can build cheap meteorite etc camera anywhere ;)
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Re: Cheap All Sky camera project with Raspberry Pi

#10

Post by turboscrew »


c64 wrote: Tue Oct 06, 2020 4:10 pm
turboscrew wrote: Mon Oct 05, 2020 8:20 pm Nice gadget!
Does your nick come from a certain computer?
Yes your right :)
I still have mine in the attic. :)
- Juha

Senior Embedded SW Designer
Telescope: OrionOptics XV12, Mount: CEM120, Tri-pier 360 and alternative dobson mount.
Grab 'n go: Omegon AC 102/660 on AZ-3 mount
Eyepieces: 26 mm Omegon SWAN 70°, 15 mm TV Plössl, 12.5 mm Baader Morpheus, 10 mm TV Delos, 6 mm Baader Classic Ortho, 5 mm TV DeLite, 4 mm and 3 mm TV Radians
Cameras: ZWO ASI 294MM Pro, Omegon veLOX 178C
OAG: TS-Optics TSOAG09, ZWO EFW 7 x 36 mm, ZWO filter sets: LRGB and Ha/OIII/SII
Explore Scientific HR 2" coma corrector, Meade x3 1.25" Barlow, TV PowerMate 4x 2"
Some filters (#80A, ND-96, ND-09, Astronomik UHC)
Laptop: Acer Enduro Urban N3 semi-rugged, Windows 11
LAT 61° 28' 10.9" N, Bortle 5

I don't suffer from insanity. I'm enjoying every minute of it.

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Re: Cheap All Sky camera project with Raspberry Pi

#11

Post by turboscrew »


BTW, in case you happen to need a bare metal gdb agent, I wrote this some years ago. Works with RPi 2 and (I've heard) RPi3.
https://github.com/turboscrew/rpi_stub
- Juha

Senior Embedded SW Designer
Telescope: OrionOptics XV12, Mount: CEM120, Tri-pier 360 and alternative dobson mount.
Grab 'n go: Omegon AC 102/660 on AZ-3 mount
Eyepieces: 26 mm Omegon SWAN 70°, 15 mm TV Plössl, 12.5 mm Baader Morpheus, 10 mm TV Delos, 6 mm Baader Classic Ortho, 5 mm TV DeLite, 4 mm and 3 mm TV Radians
Cameras: ZWO ASI 294MM Pro, Omegon veLOX 178C
OAG: TS-Optics TSOAG09, ZWO EFW 7 x 36 mm, ZWO filter sets: LRGB and Ha/OIII/SII
Explore Scientific HR 2" coma corrector, Meade x3 1.25" Barlow, TV PowerMate 4x 2"
Some filters (#80A, ND-96, ND-09, Astronomik UHC)
Laptop: Acer Enduro Urban N3 semi-rugged, Windows 11
LAT 61° 28' 10.9" N, Bortle 5

I don't suffer from insanity. I'm enjoying every minute of it.

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Re: Cheap All Sky camera project with Raspberry Pi

#12

Post by c64 »


Hi!

Last night i got same bright 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"
MTX1_120s_e7000_g4_2020-10-20T02_05_04+03_00_crop1.jpg
And camera HQ : "./meteotuxpi -d60 -e10000 -g4"
AllSky_60_e10000_g4_2020-10-20T02_05_04+03_00_crop.jpg
Both images are cropped.

Cheers!
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Re: Cheap All Sky camera project with Raspberry Pi

#13

Post by Chich »


Do you treat the inside/outside of the dome to prevent dew/rain/crud build up?
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Re: Cheap All Sky camera project with Raspberry Pi

#14

Post by c64 »


Chich wrote: Tue Dec 29, 2020 7:38 pm Do you treat the inside/outside of the dome to prevent dew/rain/crud build up?
The heat resistors are inside dome and it works great!
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Re: Cheap All Sky camera project with Raspberry Pi

#15

Post by Big_Eight »


Super cool idea and project. Thanks for sharing some very neat shots you got there.
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Re: Cheap All Sky camera project with Raspberry Pi

#16

Post by c64 »


Hi!

Just a little update here. If you use Raspberry Pi OS (bullseye) and try to run Meteotux PI www.meteotuxpi.com you will get error Error: Camera maximum exposure time is 0 ms

To fix this you need to enable Legacy Camera support. Use sudo raspi-config select Interface Options and enable Legacy Camera support and after reboot Meteotux PI will run ok.

Cheers!
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