Instructions for installing the AllSky software for the newly released Raspberry Pi HQ Camera (released on 01-05-2020):
Prerequisite RPi 3 or 4 with 16 GB (or greater) memory card and the HQ camera (aka camera V3).
Goto: https://www.raspberr…ownloads/noobs/
Choose: NOOBS Lite Network install only and download the zip file.
Copy the content of the ZIP file (so unzipped) onto the SD card.
Put SD card in Raspberry Pi and fire it up…
Log in for the first time (pi/raspberry)
Change password to your liking with:
passwdConfigure the Raspberry Pi:
sudo raspi-configSwitch on 5 Interfacing Options->P1 Camera
Optional switch on 5 Interfacing Options->P2 SSH (for ssh access, e.g. with Putty from Windows machine)
Set 7 Advanced Options->Memory Split to 256 MB
Close raspi-config and choose to reboot.
Answer the localization questions in the dialogues to your liking and change your password.
Start Preferences -> Raspberry Pi Configuration (via the raspberry icon at the left top):
tab System: – fill in the desired hostname – select if you want to boot with the graphical (GUI) or command line interface (CLI)
tab Interfaces: – Switch the camera on – Optional switch SSH on (for ssh access, e.g. with Putty from Windows machine)
tab Performance: – set GPU memory on 256 MB
Exit the raspi-config application and choose to reboot when the option is presented.
After booting using the GUI option open terminal window (not needed for command line interface):
Update and upgrade the Raspberry Pi:
sudo rpi-update(answer with y each time y/n is presented)
reboot with:
sudo shutdown -r 0When needed open terminal window after the reboot. Continue to ensure the Raspberry Pi is fully up to date with:
sudo apt update -y
sudo apt full-upgrade -yEnsure in the future your Raspberry Pi automatically updates all packages:
sudo apt-get install unattended-upgrades -yWhen you have the HQ camera working on your Raspberry Pi (test using raspistill -v -o test.jpg) then download and install the adjusted AllSky software via:
cd ~
sudo apt-get install git
git clone https://github.com/RobboRob/allsky.git
cd allsky
sudo ./install_RPiHQ.shManual starting image capturing can be started via (but it is also possible to automatically start image capturing after a reboot of the Raspberry Pi):
cd ~/allsky
./allsky_RPiHQ.shEnable or disable the automatic capturing service with (the allsky_RPiHQ service is default enabled):
sudo systemctl enable allsky_RPiHQ.serviceand
sudo systemctl disable allsky_RPiHQ.serviceThe web GUI can be installed via:
cd ~/allsky
sudo gui/install_RPiHQ.shTest the GUI software using your favorite browser via http://[Your Raspberry Pi's IP address]. The default username is 'admin' and the default password is 'secret'. The IP address can be obtained by executing:
hostname -ICheck and change the default settings in the ~/allsky/config.sh file and, when using the Allsky web GUI via the camera settings page, or if you choose to only use the command line interface option check and alter the settings.json file in the ~/allsky directory.
Follow the instructions below regarding dark frame correction with one exception: configure the filename as dark.jpg instead of dark.png.
The HQ camera software version will automatically update when changes/additions are made to this version of the software. To check for new versions of the software stop and start the service or save the camera settings (which will stop and start the service for you).
This is the source code for the Wireless Allsky Camera project described on Instructables.
In order to get the camera working properly you will need the following hardware:
- An ASI camera from ZWO. Tested cameras include ASI120MC*, ASI120MM*, ASI120MC-S, ASI120MM-S, ASI224MC, ASI178MC, ASI185MC, ASI290MC, ASI1600MC
- A Raspberry Pi 2 or 3
- A USB wireless dongle if using a Pi 2. This one has been tested.
Note:* Owners of USB2.0 cameras such as ASI120MC and ASI120MM may need to do a firmware upgrade (This changes the camera to use 512 byte packets instead of 1024 which makes it more compatible with most hardware.)
The Datyson T7 camera seems to be supported as well. The firmware needs to be upgraded with ZWO's compatible firmware (see link above) and you'll need to add this line in /boot/config.txt: program_usb_boot_mode=0
You will need to install Raspbian on your Raspberry Pi. Follow this link for information on how to do it.
Make sure you have a working internet connection by setting it either through the GUI or the terminal.
Start by installing git. You may already have it installed:
sudo apt-get install gitNow fetch the code from this GitHub page. Open the terminal and type the following:
git clone --recursive https://github.com/thomasjacquin/allsky.gitThen navigate to the allsky directory:
cd allskyNow, before running the install script, if you're running a Pi 2, it may not be compatible with armv7 architecture. Run cat /proc/cpuinfo to know your processor model. If it doesn't say ARMv7, you'll need to change the first line of Makefile to say platform = armv6.
Use of allsky on non-ARM platforms is unsupported (there isn't yet an easy, portable installer) but should be possible. Have a look at install.sh to see what needs to be done. Additionally, you'll need to download the SDK.
Now, run the install script:
sudo ./install.shThere is no 1-click update yet so until then, the easiest is to backup your config files, delete the allsky directory and follow the installation instructions again.
Here's a quick overview of the configuration files.
the first one is called settings.json. It contains the camera parameters such as exposure, gain but also latitude, longitude, etc.
nano settings.json| Setting | Default | Additional Info |
|---|---|---|
| width | 0 | 0 means max width. Look up your camera specifications to know what values are supported |
| height | 0 | 0 means max height. Look up your camera specifications to know what values are supported |
| exposure | 10000 | Night time exposure in milliseconds. During the day, auto-exposure is used. |
| maxexposure | 20000 | This is the maximum exposure for night images when using auto-exposure. During the day, auto-exposure is always used. |
| autoexposure | 1 | Set to 0 to disable auto-exposure at night. Auto-exposure delivers properly exposed images throughout the night even if the overall brightness of the sky changes (cloud cover, moon, aurora, etc). When set to 1, maxexposure value will be used as the delay between timelapse frames. |
| gain | 50 | Gain for Night images. Varies from 0 to 600. During the day, gain is always set to 0 |
| maxgain | 200 | Maximum gain for night images when using auto-gain. |
| autogain | 0 | Set to 1 to allow auto-gain at night. This mode will adjust the gain of night images when the overall brightness of the sky changes (cloud cover, moon, aurora, etc). Avoid using autoexposure and autogain together as it produces unpredicatble results (dark frames, but not always). |
| gamma | 50 | Varies between 0 and 100. This setting increases or decreases contrast between dark and bright areas. |
| brightness | 50 | Varies between 0 and 100. This setting changes the amount of light in the image. |
| wbr | 53 | Varies between 0 and 100. This is the intensity of the red component of the image. |
| wbb | 90 | Varies between 0 and 100. This is the intensity of the blue component of the image. |
| bin | 1 | bin 2 collects the light from 2x2 photosites to form 1 pixel on the image. bin 3 uses 3x3 photosites, etc. Increasing the bin results in smaller images and reduces the need for long exposure. Look up your camera specifications to know what values are supported |
| delay | 10 | Time in milliseconds to wait between 2 frames at night. |
| daytimeDelay | 5000 | Time in milliseconds to wait between 2 frames during the day. |
| type | 1 | Image format. 0=RAW 8 bits, 1=RGB 24 bits, 2=RAW 16 bits |
| quality | 95 | Compression of the image. 0(low quality) to 100(high quality) for JPG images, 0 to 9 for PNG |
| usb | 40 | This is the USB bandwidth. Varies from 40 to 100. |
| filename | image.jpg | this is the name used across the app. Supported extensions are JPG and PNG. |
| flip | 0 | 0=Original, 1=Horizontal, 2=Vertical, 3=Both |
| text | text | Text overlay. Note: It is replaced by timestamp if time=1 |
| textx | 15 | Horizontal text placement from the left |
| texty | 35 | Vertical text placement from the top |
| fontname | 0 | Font type for the overlay. 0=Simplex, 1=Plain, 2=Duplex, 3=Complex, 4=Triplex, 5=Complex small, 6=Script simplex, 7=Script complex |
| fontcolor | 255 255 255 | Font color in BGR |
| smallfontcolor | 0 0 255 | Small Font color in BGR |
| fontsize | 0.7 | Font size |
| fonttype | 0 | Controls the smoothness of the fonts. 0=Antialiased, 1=8 Connected, 2=4 Connected. |
| fontline | 1 | font line thickness |
| latitude | 60.7N | Latitude of the camera. N for North and S for South |
| longitude | 135.05W | longitude of the camera. E for East and W for West |
| angle | -6 | Altitude of the sun above or below the horizon at which capture should start/stop. Can be negative (sun below horizon) or positive (sun above horizon). 0=Sunset, -6=Civil twilight, -12=Nautical twilight, -18=Astronomical twilight. |
| time | 1 | Replaces the text overlay |
| darkframe | 0 | Set to 1 to enable dark frame capture. In this mode, overlays are hidden and the image is saved as dark.png by default |
| showDetails | 1 | Displays the exposure, gain and temperature in the overlay |
The second file called config.sh lets you configure the overall behavior of the camera. Options include functionalities such as upload, timelapse, dark frame location, keogram.
nano config.sh| Configuration | Default | Additional Info |
|---|---|---|
| UPLOAD_IMG | false | Set to true to upload (ftp) the current image to a server (website, blog, host, etc) |
| UPLOAD_VIDEO | false | Set to true to upload the timelapse to a server |
| POST_END_OF_NIGHT_DATA | false | Set to true to send some data to your server at the end of each night |
| TIMELAPSE | true | Build a timelapse at the end of the night |
| FPS | 25 | The timelapse frame rate (frames per second) |
| KEOGRAM | true | Builds a keogram at the end of the night |
| UPLOAD_KEOGRAM | false | Set to true to upload the keogram to your server |
| STARTRAILS | true | Stacks images to create a startrail at the end of the night |
| BRIGHTNESS_THRESHOLD | 0.1 | Brightness level above which images are discarded (moon, head lights, aurora, etc) |
| UPLOAD_STARTRAILS | false | Set to true to uplad the startrails to your server |
| AUTO_DELETE | true | Enables automatic deletion of old images and videos |
| NIGHTS_TO_KEEP | 14 | Number of nights to keep before starting deleting. Needs AUTO_DELETE=true to work. |
| DARK_FRAME | dark.png | Path to the dark frame use for hot pixels subtraction. |
| DAYTIME | 1 | Set to 0 to disable daytime liveview. |
| CAMERA_SETTINGS | ~/allsky/settings.json | Path to the camera settings file. Note: If using the GUI, this path will change to /var/www/html/settings.json |
In order to upload images and videos to your website, you'll need to fill your FTP connection details in ftp-settings.sh
nano scripts/ftp-settings.shsaveImageNight.sh is called every time the camera takes a new image at night. You can play with this file in case your sensor is not dead center.
saveImageDay.sh is called every time the camera takes a new image during the day. Images are not archived on the SD card. They are only resized and uploaded periodically in order to monitor the sky by day.
At the end of the night endOfNight.sh is run. It calls a few other scripts based on your config.sh content.
nano is a text editor. Hit ctrl + x, followed by y and Enter in order to save your changes.
Systemd is used to launch the software automatically when the Raspberry Pi boots up. To enable or disable this behavior, you can use these commands.
sudo systemctl enable allsky.service
sudo systemctl disable allsky.service
Note:* The service is enabled by default.
When you want to start, stop or restart the program, you can use one of the following commands:
sudo service allsky start
sudo service allsky stop
sudo service allsky restartTo know the status of the allsky software, type:
sudo service allsky statusStarting the program from the terminal can be a great way to track down issues as it provides debug information. To start the program manually, make sure you first stop the service and run:
./allsky.sh
If you are using a desktop environment (Pixel, Mate, LXDE, etc) or using remote desktop or VNC, you can add the preview argument in order to show the images the program is currently saving.
./allsky.sh preview
If you don't want to configure the camera using the terminal, you can install the web based graphical interface.
Please note that this will change your hostname to allsky, install lighttpd and replace your /var/www/html directory. It will also move settings.json to /etc/raspap/settings.json.
sudo gui/install.shNote:* If you use an older version of Raspbian, the install script may fail on php7.0-cgi dependency. Edit gui/install.sh and replace php7.0-cgi by php5-cgi.
After you complete the GUI setup, you'll be able to administer the camera using the web UI by navigating to
http://your_raspberry_IPor
http://allsky.localThe default username is 'admin' and the default password is 'secret'.
A public page is also available in order to view the current image without having to log into the portal. This can be useful for people who don't have a personal website but still want to share a view of their sky :
http://your_raspberry_IP/public.phpNote:* The GUI setup uses /etc/raspap/settings.json for the camera settings. If, for some reason, you prefer to go back to the non-gui version, make sure to edit your config.sh file to have CAMERA_SETTINGS="settings.json" instead.
The dark frame subtraction feature was implemented to remove hot pixels from night sky images. The concept is the following: Take an image with a cover on your camera lens and subtract that image later to all images taken throughout the night.
You only need to follow these instructions once.
Manual method:
- make sure config.sh has a DARK_FRAME configuration. Default is "dark.png"
- Place a cover on your camera lens/dome
- Set darkframe to 1 in settings.json
- Restart the allsky service:
sudo service allsky restart - A new file has been created at the root of the project: dark.png by default
- Set darkframe to 0 in settings.json
- Restart the allsky service:
sudo service allsky restart - Remove the cover from the lens/dome
GUI method:
- make sure config.sh has a DARK_FRAME configuration. Default is "dark.png"
- Place a cover on your camera lens/dome
- Open the Camera Settings tab and set Dark Frame to Yes.
- Hit the Save button
- A new file has been created at the root of the project: dark.png by default
- On the Camera Settings tab and set Dark Frame to No.
- Hit the Save button
- Remove the cover from the lens/dome
The dark frame is now created and will always be subtracted from captured images. In case the outside temperature varies significantly and you start seeing more / less hot pixels, you can run these instructions again to create a new dark frame.
By default, a timelapse is generated at dawn from all of the images captured during last night.
To disable timelapse, open config.sh and set
TIMELAPSE=false
Example to generate a timelapse manually:
./scripts/timelapse.sh 20190322
A Keogram is an image giving a quick view of the night activity. It was originally invented to study the aurora borealis. For each image taken during the night, a central vertical column 1 pixel wide is extracted. All these columns are then stitched together from left to right. This results in a timeline that reads from dusk to dawn.
To get the best results, you will need to rotate your camera to have north at the top. That way, using a fisheye lens, you end up with the bottom of the keogram being the southern horizon and the top being the northern horizon.
Note that it will only show what happens at the meridian during the night and will not display events on the east or west.
The program takes 3 arguments:
- Source directory
- File extension
- Output file
Example when running the program manually:
./keogram ./images/20180223/ jpg ./images/20180223/keogram.jpg
To disable keograms, open config.sh and set
KEOGRAM=false
Startrails can be generated by stacking all the images from a night on top of each other. The program takes 4 arguments:
- Source directory
- File extension
- Brightness treshold to avoid over-exposure: 0 (black) to 1 (white).
- Output file
Example when running the program manually:
./startrails ./images/20180223/ jpg 0.15 ./images/20180223/startrails.jpg
To disable automatic startrails, open config.sh and set
STARTRAILS=false
In order to keep the Raspberry Pi SD card from filling up, 2 settings have been added to config.sh. Automatic deletion is enabled by default and will keep 2 weeks of data on the card.
AUTO_DELETE=true
NIGHTS_TO_KEEP=14
Modify these values if you wish to increase/decrease the number of nights to retain on the card. Set to false to keep all nights (requires manual management of SD card free space).
When using the allsky service, issues are written to a log file. In case the program stopped, crashed of behaved in an abnormal way, you can take a look at this log file:
tail /var/log/allsky.log
If you want to modify a compiled file, you'll need to edit the corresponding .cpp file and run the following command from the root of the allsky directory:
make allThis will compile the new code and create a new binary.
If you have set the upload options to true in config.sh, that means you probably already have a website. If you want to display a live view of your sky on your website like in this example, you can donwload the source files from this repository: https://github.com/thomasjacquin/allsky-website.git.
If you've built an allsky camera, please send me a message and I'll add you to the map.
- version 0.1: Initial release
- version 0.2: Separated camera settings from code logic
- version 0.3: Added dark frame subtraction
- version 0.4: Added Keograms (summary of the night in one image)
- version 0.5: Added Startrails (image stacking) with brightness control
- Keograms and Startrails generation is now much faster thanks to a rewrite by Jarno Paananen.
- version 0.6: Added daytime exposure and auto-exposure capability
- Added -maxexposure, -autoexposure, -maxgain, -autogain options. Note that using autoexposure and autogain at the same time may produce unexpected results (black frames).
- Autostart is now based on systemd and should work on all raspbian based systems, including headless distributions. Remote controlling will not start multiple instances of the software.
- Replaced
nodisplayoption withpreviewargument. No preview in autostart mode. - When using the GUI, camera options can be saved without rebooting the RPi.
- Added a publicly accessible preview to the GUI: public.php
- Changed exposure unit to milliseconds instead of microseconds
- version 0.7: Added support for Raspberry Pi camera's
If you found this project useful, you can give me a cup of coffee :)
