180 degree fisheye lens on my AllSky Camera

[jsalsburg]

Put a new 180 degree fisheye lens on my AllSky Camera. This makes putting the camera on a mast even more imperative.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09BQYXYCR?psc=1&ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_product_details
The camera is still in my porch area so I can easily curate it. I plan to put it on the mast seen in the screenshot.

[aaronwmorris]

Very nice. What camera are you using?

[jsalsburg]

http://oceanave.ddns.net/

Arducam B0449, IMX519 16MP pixel resolution of 4656 x 3496
https://www.uctronics.com/16mp-imx519-camera-module-with-m12-lens-wide-angle-color-rolling-shutter-for-raspberry-pi-and-openhd.html

Replaced its lens with this...
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09BQYXYCR?psc=1&ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_product_details

[aaronwmorris]

Very nice!

I am always on the lookout for lens information. The size of the image circle is scarce information. With the sensor info and your image, I can measure the size of the circle and add it to my Camera Simulator.

According to my calculations, the image circle for that lens is ~5.8mm. Now you can see what the image circle would look like on every other sensor I already have in my simulator.

This is approximately what the image circle is for your sensor and lens:
https://allsky.aarmor.net/indi-allsky/camerasimulator?lens=m12_f2.0_1.85mm_1-1.8&sensor=imx519&offset_x=-50&offset_y=0

[jsalsburg]

I was mostly guessing about purchasing this lens. It was a good guess.

[EricClaeys]

@aaronwmorris, do you mind if we add a link to your camera simulator to Allsky?

[aaronwmorris]

Please do.

[jsalsburg]

http://oceanave.ddns.net/
Put my AllSky Camera on top of a mast, hopefully better darkness and less unwanted local lights. The sky is now about 85% of the view. I will experiment with a 5 foot extension above this which should reveal another few percent of the sky.

[jsalsburg]

Made changes to my AllSky Camera. Swapped 180° lens for a 'Sonew' 170° Fisheye (Amazon). Lowered the mast 5 feet to prevent a new streetlight from shining on the dome. Raised the covering membrane so it masks nearby lights. These changes deny visibility of the horizon, but this reduces the amount of unwanted horizontal light striking the dome which masks the stars/meteors, etc. Now I see I need to raise the camera and lens higher, closer to the dome just a little.

[jsalsburg]

Experienced trouble. When setting up my rig with its new 170° lens, I had trouble with my monitor. I put the camera rig on my workbench with a portable Monitor. The Monitor refused to show the HDMI of the RPi. I had to unplug the RPi from power several times. This apparently disturbed the SSD setting in the RPi OS I use to hold the Saved Folders of each day's sessions. I finally figured out the RPi OS was making new SSDs (SSD1, SSD2, SSD3, SSD4) in the OS and marking the older SSD pathways as root with restricted permissions. This screwed up the variables script in the AllSky software so it was not saving images. I reformatted the SSD but this made no difference. Somewhere in the RPi OS there is a screwed up configuration for the (USB) SSD. I went in and changed the permissions and owner privileges to SSD. This solved the problem. So the lesson is, do not disconnect power from RPi, without using Shutdown.

[EricClaeys]

@jsalsburg, glad you eventually got it working.
Anytime you turn off power without properly shutting down you risk corrupting files on the disk. This is true on Windows as well.