Decentralized modular all sky camera system (INDIGO, Raspberry Pi, heated enclosure)

Описание: Today, I wanted to share with you a fun little project I had been putting off for quite a while.

My current all-sky camera does its job, but there is also a lot of room for improvement.

Firstly, I wanted to improve the design to make it more modular and easier to assemble. The new design was built from scratch and is vastly improved with press-fitted components that are modular and potentially enable different configurations and additional components.

Secondly, it is connected directly to the observatory imaging PC via a USB cable. It captures all-sky images via AllSkEye software, which is a great tool to automate your all-sky camera with lots of options. The problem with this solution is that you need to have a Windows PC in the vicinity of the camera. After some research, I found out that it can connect to the Indigo server, which can run on a Raspberry Pi by installing the Indigosky image. So, I gave it a shot and installed it on my Raspberry Pi. Except for some WiFi settings hiccups, everything worked right out of the box. I could connect to the camera from a Windows PC server via the Indigo server running in the same network.

And finally, the current solution has an unregulated heater, which is problematic, especially in the summer when it overheats the camera. For heating regulation, I decided to use a circuit from one of our other products - the flap panel. It already contains everything to keep the internal temperature of the camera high enough to prevent dew accumulation but also turns it off when it gets too hot.

Music:
https://uppbeat.io/t/andrey-rossi/sei...
https://uppbeat.io/track/mood-maze/tr...
License code: DHFUMSVQJVTZHDY0