Відео

i thnk you can not see them in timelaps

Thanks! I'm currently working on a "all the prettiest moments" type of video, that I'll hopefully upload very soon. I could definitely find a better way to do it, but streaming it also threw a bit of a wrench into it for me. I recorded the feed as an MKV rather than taking them as pictures. Give or take, around 25 gigs a day. I had to get a large hard drive just for this project.

@@phuongrambo8293 Well, no matter what happens here on Earth, everything out there will continue to do it’s thing. The concept of beauty is a Human invention. The universe doesn’t care what happens here. It’s just a matter of whether we can stick around to witness it. I hope we can.

@@wasdaletimelapse7658 Thank you so much! It’s nice because I can slow it down to the point of being able to see a flock of birds or something slow go by, or little changes in lighting during sunset / sunrise. Yes it is kind of insane. I had to get an 8TB HDD dedicated solely to this, and I actually wish I got a bigger one. It is still up and running, and I’m still recording. I’m especially interested in seeing the difference between now and a year ago, which I’ve got a bit over a week to compare with now. Of course I’ve learned a ton in that time, and seeing the quality improve over the year was fun for me to see as well. I may build a new enclosure for it and over-engineer it just for fun. I also have a ton of footage to pour through and process in all kinds of interesting ways. Im almost more excited to share that than I am this timelapse. Truly some pretty unique views.

@@normanrevere I look forward to seeing some more content from you in the future, I have subbed you so I don't miss it. Great work.

So it was a bit tedious, I had the live view pulled up over Remote Desktop on my phone, and would make minor adjustments and wait for it to update. The first time I had it set up I focused with the cam outside of the housing. Unfortunately over time and with the heat inside the enclosure I did have to refocus again, but for that I set the exposure time low and focused with details on the moon. Luckily with the fisheye lens focusing can be pretty forgiving.

@@normanrevere Cheers - yeah, I went with the live view technique too, but on clouds, which aren't really infinity. May stay late at work one evening and get it nailed on the Moon or stars.

@@rocketscn Thank you! There is a lot more coming soon.

Thank you sir! It’s been a hell of a ride. There are tons more to come.

@@63sgjunior Thank you!

Thank you! It took a while to make! Hahaha

@@normanreverekeep em coming! Stoked for this channel

Hah. I’ll hit you up in a year. Jokes aside, I am planning on producing a ton of stuff from this. There are really some incredible views of things I haven’t seen before besides in simulations, like seeing the planets move in their orbits and star field stabilized views of the Earth traveling around the solar system. This is just the start!

Thanks! It should be mostly plug and play with the camera. You will probably need to download drivers from ZWO’s website if you’re using an ASI camera. If your computer recognizes the camera OBS should too. The only reason I use OBS is so I can stream the feed as well as all the other widgets & music I’ve got on there, but if you’re not streaming I wouldn’t use OBS. There are plenty of options out there now for just recording that are better than OBS. AllSkyeye is one that comes to mind, I think there’s also another one called Lumisky that is coming out soon. If you’re dead set on OBS though, there are a lot of different ways to set that up. I tinker with it all the time to optimize quality & file size. I’m actually going to look into changing how I do it, I’d still use OBS for the stream but I want to save the images in a separate format than recording via OBS. When I figure that out I’ll make a video on that as well :)

@@normanrevere Norman, thank you so much for your reply. I will give another try to ZWO + OBS

I’ve also heard many compliments about the music I put in my videos. But thank you for the suggestion.

@@normanrevere Well of course. But if there no music, it's not missed... whereas, if there is music, some will like it and others won't. Thank you for considering the suggestion. 🙂 And apologies if I was a little brusque.

@@-108- There’s no need to apologize, I do appreciate it! I know there’s no way to please everyone, but I also just don’t enjoy silent videos or videos with just narration. I usually like to use anything remotely spacey themed for music if I’m not speaking in the video. Next time I’ll throw in something classy like Skrillex. Clearly this music is too tame ;)

Oh wow! You're right. Its the lens that comes with the 678mc. Its a ZWO 2.5mm 170 degree lens. There are a lot of similar ones that would work as well.

@@andrewpoison from what I can see, the sensor hasn’t suffered any noticeable damage whatsoever. Ive had it streaming the sky on my channel since I uploaded this video, and it’s still humming along perfectly fine! I did take a dark frame when I started streaming, when I finish my one year timelapse I can take another and compare. I think the reason it’s fine is because the lens is a 2.5mm fisheye. The suns rays aren’t being concentrated very much compared to a normal lens.

OBS. I stream and record with it. That's also how I'm able to display all the widgets. There are a few options besides OBS though. And if you aren't streaming, its not the best option. AllSkyEye and Indiallsky are two that come to mind.

Just wait for the 1 year version! Only 3 months to go. I've already started editing it!

@@wjlambert Yeah it’s probably the worst aspect of it all. I could have set the cam up further on the roof, but I wanted to have easy access from the outside and not drill any holes through the roof itself. A glass dome would probably work, I think the biggest thing is making sure it’s not too optically distorted. The acrylic works well and doesn’t have too much distortion. Not enough to make a huge difference anyway. Probably a lot cheaper too.

Thanks man. Its by far the worst part of this whole thing for me, thankfully I don't have to do it often. I don't really have anywhere to set up my imaging scope, and the one spot I could is bathed by a streetlight. I might try again at some point though. The all sky camera definitely scratches the itch though. I honestly really enjoy watching things change over the months, like the position of the Moon, the Sun, and planets. Its also been interesting to see how the constellations shift too. Its going to be interesting trying to figure out a way to display an entire year without it going by too fast or having the timelapse be too long. I'll probably upload a few different versions.

@normanrevere yeah, hmmm that would be a problem. I suppose you could put it all into one large file, then adjust the whole thing and see how it works. Or Maybe into different seasons. 🤔 I've got a pretty narrow patch of sky that works for me. Atleast for the sun. The moon gets too low and is behind trees now. All the good summer DSO aren't available where I setup. Occasionally I'll have to move my scope when switching from looking at the sun to the moon or other objects. I'm considering taking the mount of the tripod and building a custom mount in an enclosure or a sort of mini observatory. Mayne eventually automate it so if it starts raining it'll shut down and close it's self lol. But that's a more long term project

Personally I stream it to UA-cam through OBS. There are other programs out there that can output as images, which you can then send to a website automatically, and I believe OBS is capable of that as well. I don't have a ton of experience with that unfortunately!

I know! It was cool to watch live, but the timelapse just made it better. I’m experimenting around with changing the rate of the timelapses. The sheer size of the one year timelapse is going to require some drastic editing. I’ve actually already started editing it on a really basically level, and it’s been a whole process. It turns out recording the sky for a year straight might be the easy part.

Yes there is. I’d start by using a powered USB hub, adding a voltage regulator to the dew heater, and making a better passive cooling system than what I had. I’d also mention marking the orientation of the camera both on the cam and the housing so if you have to take things apart you can put them back exactly how they were prior. I have made a lot of changes since I uploaded this video, and while the setup in this vid worked well for me, the changes I made have made things much better. I’ll make a follow up video to this one at some point soon.

I like the 678mc, it was recommended to me from someone who uses theirs to record their imaging sessions. But that doesn’t mean you wouldn’t get awesome results with something else. I’m not sure if it would matter in practice, but having a low read noise is really nice. Especially when the cam sits baking in the sun half the time.

@@normanrevere Thanks, that makes some sense. I've got an ASI2600MM for deep sky and I understand the stats from that, but I've never done planetary and I know their cams are quite different when it comes to what's important and this is a different use case altogether. Your video quality of the timelapse looks amazing, so that's good enough a sale for me when choosing between similar cams. Not sure if I'll pull the unit one day to do planetary or just get a newer one if I ever switch to doing that. My new scope is short focal length, so it'll be awhile.

So the small cooling fan is this: www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00EL938E6/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1 But its not available anymore. I got it for another project years ago, but anything small and similar would work. The fins, I have no idea. I found it in one of my "random junk" boxes and I think it came from a really old laptop or something. The bracket is just an L bracket for woodwork.

I just use OBS. The cam connects to my mini-pc and then I just run the cam through there. Is the camera the thing that is crashing? or is it software? If its the camera, it might not be getting enough power or your USB cable is too long. I fixed that by using a powered USB hub and a short USB from the hub to the camera.

Mine is a powered 30 ft USB 2.0. I also upgraded to a powered USB hub after the video was made, which I believe I put in the description. The dew heater is always on. You could probably put some kind of thermal switch in there, or some other kind of sensor to turn it on or off. I think most of the heat is caused by the sun though. I've experimented with turning it off during the day, but it had a pretty negligible impact on the camera temp. I may build a new housing in the future, with a TEC incorporated somewhere. I have actually made a few bootleg upgrades to the housing since I uploaded this, which I'll show off in an update video that I'll put out when the cam gets 1 year old. I have been recording constantly since I uploaded this! In the meantime, this is what i've done: Added a powered USB hub, Added a sealed copper pipe with both ends sticking out the side of the housing, with a bunch of metal chain inside to act as thermal mass & heatsink for the cam. The chain is attached directly to the bit of metal I attached to the bottom of the cam, with some thermal paste added between the chain links and the copper pipe. It helped drop the internal temp by almost 10-15f. I also stuck some reflective tape to the bottom and back of the housing. That helped lower the temp a few degrees as well. Nowadays the cam averages around 120-130f on a hot sunny day. I would put it all the way around, but I think my neighbors think I'm weird enough already for having this thing on my roof. I don't need to make it even more noticeable! Haha.

@@normanrevere I ended up just putting everything inside an 8" housing (like yours, just bigger). I used a cpu heatsink on the inside attached to a linear fin heatsink on the outside underneath. Which is where the flange base attaches. The heatsinks are sealed airtight. There is a PWM fan on the PI5 and an 12v blower on the ASI676MC. These create the air circulation for the internal heatsink so it does not need its own fan. The outside heatsink is cooled passively just by wind. Almost all of the exterior housing is covered in aluminum tape except the bottom. I added 2, 12v/7 watt polyimide stickers in series to the underside of the lid (under the dome, but inside the box) for dew control. It acts similar to under-the-floor heating. They are triggered on by a relay which is activated by a GPIO pin. I use no sensors for the dew control. I use the open-weather module in the allsky software and set it to activate when the dew point is within 5 degrees F of ambient (default is 10 degrees which I found is too much and not needed). I have not had any dew issues for the past month. I also have it set to turn the heaters on when the temps are near freezing no matter what the dew point is to make sure snow and ice melt. The 2, 7 watt heater strips in series total 3.5 watts spread over a larger surface area. This is better than a bunch a resistors wired together and focuses the heat to the dome (the heater strips have foam pads covering them so they are not cooled by fans). This past week has been near 100F and full sun. I have not seen the core CPU temp of the Pi5 hit 60C yet. I don't have a temp sensor for the inside of housing, but the camera sensor when not in use, shows about 50C during the hot weather. So that's relatively close the the internal housing temp. That's not much different than an attic. I also purged the housing with dry nitrogen gas before closing to eliminate any potential for internal condensation during cold days. Assuming it has no micro-air leaks. The whole system is powered by a 12v feed from a 12v UPS and I use an 12-24v to 5.1v 5A USB-C converter inside the housing. This allows it to be easily removed and plugged to any mobile 12v source such as a PD battery bank. I found this to be more versatile than POE. I also wired in some external LEDs in parallel to the dew heaters to show visually if the heaters are actually being powered since the software module only shows activation and not power flow. There could be some improvement to the heat dissipation system but for as long as it's done mostly passively, I would prefer not to over-do it. Since it will be very cold during winter I'm trying to retain some amount of heat inside the housing. I do need to add a comment about meteor imaging using these planetary cams though. For mono I highly suggest binning minimal of 2x2. Larger pixels are more sensitive to light. I find running my color 676 at full res, the pixels are too small to absorb light from fast moving light sources. For satellites and planes it works great though no matter how dim they are. Binning a color cam though is pointless since it is impossible to make a group of pixels into one at the hardware level. In my case though, my goal is to capture better images of "fireballs" with better color, resolution and suppressed noise vs my Allsky7 meteor system can produce. The meteor system is amazing for video capture of even the most faint meteors but it's image creation is just stacked frames and is usually over exposing bright meteors with only fair color detail. I have compared images/video from both systems and even the semi-bright meteors are rather faint using the allsky cam. If meteors are the goal then a color camera with a pixel size of 4um or larger is suggested or bin mono to achieve the same or larger pixel size. Although low res kind of sucks for fish-eye lenses. The other goal with this is for aurora should it occur again. The 676MC is starvis 2 and has amazing light sensitivity for that purpose. My meteor system did capture all night video of that event, but creating time-lapses from 7 cams worth of video is a huge pain. That's were these types of allsky cams really simplify things. The only thing I wish I could find is a better/faster lens and they don't really exist for these small planetary camera sensors in fish-eye format. The stock lenses are about as good as it gets.

On the first night I actually kept myself awake until 5 am for a chance to see it. I saw it with my eyes for maybe a minute before the clouds rolled back in. The intermittent rain kept me from setting up my Nikon. On the 2nd night I set it up with a plastic bag around everything except the lens and just let it run hoping for a chance. I was really lucky to catch it!

Honestly that could probably work if you place the camera as close to the glass as possible. There could be distortions on the outer edges, though I guess you still get those with a dome as well. I think my biggest concern would be water and dust collecting on the flat surface if it is level. You would probably have to angle it so water can flow off. As for the dome getting dirty, for the most part the rain takes care of it. I sometimes spray it with a hose to wash it off if it hasn't rained in a while. I rarely have to go up and clean it with a cloth. Build it and find out!

@@normanrevere thanks for your tips. I think you're right, a flat surface may be easier to clean but accumulate dirt more easily. I'll try to use a dome, and maybe add a sprinkler to spray some water in case It gets dirty. Getting the water is not a problem, I can collect the rain in a little tank, and use that. But I'll test the setup before, maybe it will stay clean. The problem is that the place where I want to mount the camera is not easy to reach, the only way to get there is to exit through a skylight on the roof, which is not the easiest operation 😄

Yeah... it is what it is. Maybe one day I can build one somewhere darker.

Thanks!

Honestly at this point I have to agree, I'd never buy one at todays price. I spent considerably less on it 6 years ago and I don't think they've changed much since to warrant that kind of price.

I did! Also made a timelapse using my Nikon and TS130. Im making a short video about it, ill upload it in the next few days! The all sky cam did a good job recording the change in brightness and the surroundings, i basically set it to whatever exposure and bias it was at just before it started and let it run at those settings for the whole eclipse. I still need to process that footage though. My cam has been giving me a lot of issues these past few weeks and especially after the eclipse and upgrading to the mini-pc. Still trying to sort that stuff out. Its funny how differently everything behaves on the day to day despite having the same settings. Also, I have a new ISP available so i may switch to that one. 300mbps upload speed and unlimited data for $7 more a month than i currently pay. Im going to make the switch over the next few weeks as my current upload speed is limited to 15mbps upload and 1280gb a month data cap. Seems like a no brainer.

@@normanrevere NICE! I'm working on a video as well. I got 60 images through the telescope during the eclipse, so I'll be making a time lapse from those. I hear you on the tech side of things. My laptop I use to run my scope finally stopped turning on. It was an Asus (refurbished I think) from, I believe 2010, so I've put it through a lot, including leaving it in the hot summer sun probably way too many times. Now I have a 25foot active USB cord and a USB hub on the other end so I can run things directly. I've still got to work out issues with guiding though. I'm not sure if its because I'm not using a cheap USB webcam as opposed to an actual guide camera, or because my telescope mount is cheap, or maybe both. I'm going to try a few different things and see if I can get it to cooperate. It would be nice to stream the Moon, Sun and such without having to manually correct the telescope every few minutes.