@MookyTroubadour that sounds like a fun project for our 10-year old and I. If it's an easy share without taking too much of your time, I'd certainly be interested in seeing it!

@Damobius it an issue at all. I have several that are pointed in different parts of the sky, and only one is giving me any issue that has to do with making the movie. I’m suspecting it might be because I have the 64 bit OS on that ones. FFMPEG makes the videos, and might not like the 64 bit OS. I continue to poke at it.

@MookyTroubadour I've got a Pi that I haven't used for a decade but it's really ancient, like 1st gen old. There are a ton of alts out now too. Gonna have to start brushing the cobwebs out of my tech brain. You using Python?

@Damobius no Python needed. There are two ways to control the camera. The old Raspi-still command or the new Libcamera. The image you saw was via Libcamera. Either will work, but Raspi-still will be deprecated here soon (allegedly)

@Damobius for the date stamp, that uses software called Imagemagick (free) and the video uses FFMPEG (also free).

@MookyTroubadour

You're getting me excited. Def a great fall project for our family!

@Damobius happy to help if you want to give it a whirl. :)

@MookyTroubadour

Going to spend a couple days researching and will be collecting this info!

@Damobius the trade off as far as I can tell is that the v2 is more like film in that a meteor streak looks like what you’d expect. The v3 camera will sometimes make the meteors look like dotted lines. It has to do with how the “shutters” function. The v3 NoIR is so much more sensitive. Those images I shared are from a city with horrid light pollution (Tacoma, WA)

@MookyTroubadour

Know the area. I grew up in Seattle's North End. I miss it.

Found my case...

GeeekPi Raspberry Pi 4 Case, Raspberry Pi 4 Case with Cooling Fan, Raspberry Pi 4 Heatsink, Retro Gaming Nes4Pi Case for Raspberry Pi 4 Model B/4B https://a.co/d/cBYLBOq

@Damobius it’s got delightful retro panache, but I don’t know that’d it’d stand up to rain or the elements :)

@MookyTroubadour yeah, it'd need some additional weatherproofing 😄

@Damobius as an FYI, I’m exploring using alternatives to acrylic domes. They tend to catch strange reflections, and aren’t especially optically true. I made a 180mm box for gear and made a lid with a hole for a dome, but now I’m trying a modified roof shape with a rectangular cut out over which I’ll silicon seal a phone screen protector bit of gorilla glass. As long as water sheds off of it reasonably well, I think this might be better.

@MookyTroubadour

I was wondering about optical distortion. Good to know. Thanks!

@Damobius as far as a parts list, you’ll want a Pi (version 4 with 2GB or better). Mercifully these are back down to ~$75. For storage, I get SSD’s now as the costs are so close to SD card or thumb drive. 256GB for >$25 and a usb to SSD cable- maybe $10. You’ll need a box of some kind. I have plastic project boxes, as well as laquered cigar boxes. You probably have something on hand that’ll keep the rain off.

@MookyTroubadour

I can probably find something on Thingiverse.

@Damobius the acrylic domes are ~$15 on Amazon. A Pi power supply is >$10. The new Pi camera v3 NoIR is I think about $35.

How you support it under the dome can be whatever suits you. Popsicle sticks. Anything.

The rest is software stuff which is all free, but you’ll need a computer to load up the OS.

@Damobius I think that’s all the hardware needed. Most recently I 3D printed an enclosure, which is nice that it’s bespoke, but honestly is overkill. Anything that keeps the rain off and maybe allows venting will work.

@Damobius the rest is all scripted. I kick off the images at 10PM now that it’s summer, and cut that off at 4:30am or so.

I have a script that uses ImageMagick to take the image info and put it up in the left corner of each frame. That takes typically a half hour or so to process the few thousand stills. Then I have a script that simply lists all the JPg files so that FFMPEG can build a time lapse video.

@MookyTroubadour

I've got an old nanocomp in the closet that I could easily turn into another Ubuntu file server to collect the output.

As usual, I bite off a mouthful of apple and start chewing the whole tree 🤦‍♂️

@Damobius you could probably use an older/slower Pi if you were just going to take pictures, but I’d worry a little about the lag time between shots. That’s not a crisis, but you might get only 3 to 4 ten second exposures per minute that way. Easy to miss stuff with gaps like that.

@Damobius I should also mention that the v2 cameras and prior have a shutter limitation of 6 seconds.

@MookyTroubadour

Okay, I finally got around to gathering the hardware to get this started. I can't find a link to the scripts you are using though (if you posted any...it's been a month). Do you have them reposited anywhere? Going to get with our 10 this weekend and start construction.

@Damobius happy to help- help me level set- are you familiar with apt-get installations? If I said “install ImageMagick” is that enough, or should I be more granular? Either way is fine, I just mean to start at where it’s helpful.

@MookyTroubadour I've set up Ubuntu servers with some add-ons like a Minecraft server so I can follow instructions and know the basics of command line (I set up the server as a headless media server) but I'm no guru. I have access to Pluralsight though 😁

@Damobius oh, and the scripts aren’t posted anywhere- they aren’t especially complex, so I just wrote them ad hoc, and will gladly share. I’m getting the best results with No Infrared filters, but that’s not an absolute requirement. Which camera did you get? I’ve also moved to the newer Libcamera versus Raspistill, but the parameter argument for duration hasn’t been reliable for me, so I use crontab to start and stop.

@MookyTroubadour here's my equipment list:

Raspberry Pi 4 Model B 2019 Quad Core 64 Bit WiFi Bluetooth (4GB) https://a.co/d/7hfDuUA

Arducam for for Raspberry Pi 4/3/3 B+, https://a.co/d/95oabvo

SanDisk 256GB High Endurance Video microSDXC Card - SDSQQNR-256G-GN6IA https://a.co/d/2SYop1n

Vilros Raspberry Pi 4 Compatible Heavy Duty Aluminum Alloy Case https://a.co/d/4kObcpV

@MookyTroubadour I'll likely be building a weatherproof but vented case out of either wood or steel with a Plex viewing window

@Damobius okay, cool.
I’ve not used that camera, so it’ll be interesting to see which settings work best. Lately I’ve been building with the 64 bit Pi OS, though I don’t know that it makes any difference.

At a high level, this is the sequence I’ve been using:
1) build weather-able enclosure. (I used acrylic domes, but have moved to glass)
2) load OS (don’t use default credentials)
3) install ImageMagick
4) wait for dark and test camera parameters (using Libcamera-still and seeing what gets best images- I’ll give examples)
5) write shell scripts to: (continuing)

@Damobius
6) time lapse image collection (anywhere from every 5-6 seconds or 15 if supported. Longer shots may show star movement)
7) stop with separate script, since the duration argument seems dodgy.
8) use ImageMagick to put date/time overlay on the images from Exif values
9) make a list of all the (date stamped) images
10) build MP4 video using ffmpeg (included by default in OS build)
11) rename by date and store where I like

@Damobius you may find that the level of writing/overwriting may be a bit of a problem for your sd card. I’ve been using SSD’s as they’re so cheap. You can get a usb to SSD adapter for $12 or so, and a 128GB SSD these days under $20z. That’ll speed things up plenty, and be less sensitive for high read/write/overwrite loads. That’s more FYI- not an up front requirement kind of deal.

@MookyTroubadour this one should be okay. It's designed for high speed continuous writes. They're used in dash cams and the like, and I assume this will be a similar situation to that.

@MookyTroubadour okay! Going to start doing homework on libcamera and ImageMagik, and brush up my Linux scripting 😁. This is exciting! Since I'm not using curved Plex I'm hoping distortion is held to a minimum but will see how it goes. Thanks so much for the rundown!