Sky - Above Cam
Some brief information about the sky cam project
The stainless steel Garden Ball sky cam project works really well as it is The camera I have used is a waterproof outdoor Dome colour security camera, 1/3" SONY ICX639BK CCD 600TV LINES LOW ILLUMINATION ,DWDR,DNR ,it has been modified so the Infrared LEDs are disabled and the black and white night mode as also been disabled, as I only want this camera to record clouds, the lux on this camera does not go down enough to enable to Capture nighttime images This camera cost £29 .99 The garden stainless steel ball cost approximately £6.70, the stainless steel ball is cut in half and is mounted on a box, the camera is mounted on a Pole and is fixed to the box, sometimes when it rains you can get some condensation on the outside of the lens This does clear very quickly but what will happen is the images will become slightly foggy,as soon as the condensation clears the images because clear, you could mount a small resistor that would act as a heater this would eliminate this problem ,Please note you don't have to cut the stainless steel ball in half, you can use a deeper box and just have half the dome protruding The skycam images are in colour during the daytime, automatically the image changes to black-and-white at dusk
150mm Stainless ball cut in half to form the mirror dome
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The heater has now been installed into the camera housing, it consists of (4) -10 Ohm wire wound resistor, the centre of the circuit board has a hole cut out to allow the lens protrude through,
I am using a StarTech SVID2USB2 USB 2.0 S-Video/Composite video Capture device in the software settings you can set the image to be flipped vertical or horizontal or both , and there is a noise reduction mask setting
I have used the EasyCAP USB 2.0 Video And Audio Capture Card which worked very well, but did not have in the software away to vertical flip the image and flip horizontal This is one of the cheapest USB video capture device I've come across approximately £6.00
The Sky temperature will drop to the relevant cloud conditions , from ( Overcast, Cloudy, Partly Cloudy, Clear )
Night Time -10 to -27° , the lower the sky temperature to clear the sky (Clarity 50 -- 0)
Sky Cam Project
Platform and mounting brackets have been refurbished and redesigned March 2018
Skycam - above was made in-house
by Michael Parry-Thomas 2012©
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