All-Sky Camera Implementation and Tiddler

[Robert Capon]

Hi Everyone:

I’ve wanted an all-sky camera for some time, and got around to implementing one. I purchased the Moonglow camera, and wrote a Tiddler for it. If you want to get it working, here are the instructions. Also, you can see below for a photo of the Tiddler. I’ve chosen to update the all-sky image every 60 seconds, and to include a 24-hour strip chart, that shows the sky conditions for the past day by taking a thin sample of the sky every minute.

I chose not to set up a loop video of sky conditions to avoid consuming excess computing resources.


Using the application that comes with the program, you can take the feed from the camera and create photos that the program outputs as a jpeg image and is refreshed as often as you like, and that you can access through ACP or put on the web.

So here’s the basic steps:


1) In ACP Doc Root, create a new folder entitled “AllSkyCam”.
2) Open the software program “ASC Uploader” that comes with the camera. In the menu “Uploads” select “Custom Upload Tasks.” We’re going to create two images every minute.
3) Image 1. In Custom Upload Tasks, click “New”. Description, Image. Upload interval, 1 minute. Offset, 0 seconds. Image Type, Raw image. Size, Raw. Quality, Normal. Overlay Timestamp and Directions. Destination, Copy to directory. Folder: Navigate to the folder in the ACP Doc Root, created in Step 1 above. Filename: “Image.jpg”. Click OK.
4) Image 2. In Custom Upload Tasks, click “New”. Description, 24 Hour Chart. Upload interval, 1 minute. Offset, 0 seconds. Image Type, “Sum. of Day Image”. Size, Half-size. Quality, Normal. Do not stamp Timestamp, Directions or Labels. Destination, Copy to directory. Folder: Navigate to the folder in the ACP Doc Root, created in Step 1 above. Filename: “24Image.jpg”. Click OK.
5) Go to the ACP Doc Root/AllSkyCam folder, and verify that the jpeg images are there. They will be updated every minute.
5) OK, if you’ve gotten this far, you now have two jpeg files that will update every minute. Now you want to create the code to put this on an ACP web tiddler. Here’s the code:

<script>
return "[img[/AllSkyCam/Image.jpg?" +
new Date().getTime() + "]]";
</script>

<script>
return "[img[/AllSkyCam/24Image.jpg?" +
new Date().getTime() + "]]";
</script>

<<RefreshTiddler Refresh "Refresh Display" 60>>

6) Give your Tiddler a name. I named mine “All-Sky Camera”. If you want to include the Tiddler in your startup items, add this to your “StartupItems” tiddler:

[[All-Sky Camera]]

7) Below, you can see what the Tiddler looks like. Once you get the hang of ASC Uploader, the camera output files are highly customizable.

All best,

Rob