All Sky Image 25 June 2014 00:49 Gonneville, Normandy

[The Thing]

All Sky image using QHY5IIL using the Evetar 1.25mm f2 lens as supplied in the deluxe kit. Captured at Gonneville, 50560, France. 24 June 2014 before the streetlights turn off at 1:00am.
I didn't manage to capture the same after the lights went off. Try again tonight! It was quite a difference.

[Fay]

That little camera is good Duncan! you did a good one at Micks as well

[MarkS]

Cool!  GonzoVille looks pretty dark!

[The Thing]

The Milky Way was awesome last night, especially after the street lights went out.

BTW The very bright building is our 'barn' reflecting a street light on the lane 20m away, The chimneys are on the house, and the top of the image is the direction of the streetlight.

[RobertM]

Unusual shot that

[JohnP]

cool image Dunc & the sky looks very promising - Jealous as usual - John

[The Thing]

BTW it was a 20s exposure. At Micks I used a 1 minute exposure or more using single snapshot mode, I really need to do a like for like. Or borrow a SQM.

[Mike]

Duncan can you take video with this camera too?

[The Thing]

I took video so yes, as AVI and SER. Can't find a way of processing it that provides a better result than the single frames.

I used SharpCap to do these captures. Next time I'm going to use QHY EZPlanetary as it is more stable and provides more control, I practised with it last night when there were cloud gaps as it's a bit quirky.

BTW I keep meaning to download a motion triggered app to capture meteors, anyone know a good one?

[Mike]

I was going to say it would be a great meteor cam.

[JohnP]

BTW I keep meaning to download a motion triggered app to capture meteors, anyone know a good one?

Hey Dunc - I remember trying something similar myself a number of yesrs back using an old B&W security camera I had. see here:

http://forum.orpington-astronomy.org.uk/index.php?topic=5005.msg27590#msg27590

The S/W I used was this:

http://sonotaco.com/e_index.html

It was really good as I remember & you could download a 30 day free eval...

HTH - John

[Mike]

That looks like pretty good software John. It obviously buffers video and then keeps just whatever is relevant (based on changes, sudden brightness, etc.) So you could happily leave it running all night long.

However, at £150 it's way overpriced and i'm sure there are freeware alternatives out there.

[JohnP]

Agreed I didn't & wouldn't buy for that price - but sure I had a 30 day free eval which was great to see if the security cam was gonna do its job (which it did) - I remember it being quite exciting leaving it running all night & then looking back through files next morning to see what you had captured..

John..

[Mike]

It would probably be (relatively) easy to write something yourself using either Processing or OpenCV (C++ or Python).

I'm thinking the easiest way would be to capture individual frames into a folder whilst also doing motion detection on them. If no motion is detected then frames older than about 5 seconds old are deleted. If motion is detected then it takes all frames from 5 seconds ago up to a user set amount of seconds in the future and generates a video file from them which is stored in a separate folder.

[The Thing]

I looked at the Sonotaco stuff. It's only worth it if you want to take part in a meteor tracking network as they use it as their standard software.

#coding something is tempting though Phillips Webcam software has come with a motion detection function since at least the time of the SPC900 so there must be something out there There are other things out there but I am a bit wary of some of the free stuff in case it carries malware or nasty adware.