Pi Gazing is a project to build meteor cameras using Raspberry Pi(pigazing.dcford.org.uk) |
Pi Gazing is a project to build meteor cameras using Raspberry Pi(pigazing.dcford.org.uk) |
This site: https://tammojan.github.io/meteormap/ shows the meteors detected over the last 24 hours. You can see that the UK is pretty well covered with cameras as are some parts of Europe. The US is rather sparser -- with only Arizona having good coverage.
Building a camera is fairly easy and is under $200 -- most of the parts can be ordered on Aliexpress.
I feel like RPis are overkill unless the data is being processed in situ (even then the rpi may be overkill compute) beyond just packaging it up digestibly to be crunched elsewhere.
At my location, on most nights, I have far more aircraft crossing the field of view than meteors -- and that needs a far amount of compute to extract the signal from the noise.
A typical set of output from a nights run: https://globalmeteornetwork.org/weblog/US/US001N/US001N_2024... -- the first images is the all the meteors from the night (but it is clear that there are some aircraft there). The second image is all the tracks seen overnight and you can see that it is almost entirely aircraft.
I feel this way about most uses of RPis, but if it makes it more accessible and easier to use without the limitations of esp32 type boards then at least people are playing with things.
However, from TFA: "The Raspberry Pi computer analyses the video feed in real time to search for moving objects, "
Nearly all meteors do not actually impact the ground -- they burn up in the atmosphere. However, sometimes you get the end point quite low in the atmosphere -- then you can try and predict roughly where it will fall.
From Wikipedia:
„As of early March 2024, it consists of over 6,000 mass-produced small satellites in low Earth orbit (LEO)[5] that communicate with designated ground transceivers. Nearly 12,000 satellites are planned to be deployed, with a possible later extension to 34,400.“
The whole thing could be considered a 360 degree camera. I have no idea how good the theoretically achievable resolution would be overall.
Imagine if they already have cameras in all satellites and one day just announce they are launching a new Earth observation service.
Knowing how much elon seems to likes playing with market he prob would short all other companies in the sector before making the announcement.
There's one for tracking lightning strikes globally too: www.blitzortung.org
https://pigazing.dcford.org.uk/howitworks.php
The camera is a Watec 902H2 Ultimate, and the lense is one of these:
https://github.com/dcf21/pi-gazing/blob/master/configuration...
Probably the "Siemens 1/2" F1.2 4-12mm Varifocal Auto Iris C Mount CCTV Lens" since the AutoIris port on the camera is connected to the lense in the picture. The video capture is an Easier CAP USB capture device, like this:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/355668644499
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32832474454.html
The Pi is a Raspberry Pi 4 Model B according to the text but the photo caption says it's a Pi Mk 3, maybe either will work. It has a Pi Hat adapter board on the top (POE plugs into it and it seems to have a relay that connects to the camera, maybe to control power to the camera). The camera outdoor housing is made by Genie, looks like a TPH-2000, no longer made, runs on 240V and has a heater:
https://www.citysecuritysystems.co.uk/genie-tph-2000-230v
In the picture, maybe that's the heater board underneath the camera?
(BTW, nice overlays below the video player and a neat project overall.)
You might need to be imaging in a different wavelength....I'm unsure how this would be done.
Looks like $500 US is about the price of entry if you want to buy a kit.
I see the accessibility angle though I suppose if someone made a turn-key esp32-based sky tracker that might help get them adopted, save people money, and free up their pi.