For the last little while I’ve been working on software stuff a fair bit. The observatory controller SPAO-OBS is now fully configured using Astroberry Server, Indi-AllSky for the Allsky camera, Indi-Rollino for the rolloff roof, Indi-weatherwatcher and Indi-weathersafety for weather monitoring which is connected to both the WeatherUnderground to download live data from my Acurite Iris weather station plus OpenWeatherMap for local forecast and cloud coverage info.  Today I installed the door on the observatory, connected the limit switches (which you can see below the Mega2650) to confirm open/close, and connected one of the relays to the manual switch input on my Aleko AR1550. The second relay is wired to the fan to turn it off and on, the third will be a second fan pushing warm air into the instrument bay to help keep things dry, with a third to exhaust air out of the instrument bay when it’s hot. The fourth relay will turn the dew heater on in my allskycam. And I still have 4 more for other stuff! You can see a small perfboard that will hold the circuit that will allow the RPi/Mega to control a new electroluminescent panel for flats.  

By Gord

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