Weather, Weather….

It’s been nearly six months since the weather was decent around the new moon. I had all these plans and just need a couple of good nights to finish off a project with decent data. I guess I’ll start looking at what I have to see what I can get out of it. Really, I expected about 30-50% of the time would be decent, which is more-or-less the going rate (okay 30%, 50% would be great). So in the past six months I should have been able to get a couple of weekends, but I’ve had nothing since the beginning of November, and that was one night.

I even bought new stuff. Not astronomy stuff, we all know that’s the kiss of death for good weather. But I bought a cold weather/canvas tent, a propane heater, a propane generator for that one site where I can camp but there’s no power to recharge my battery.

I have used the time to do a little tuning of my portable setup. I’ve managed to get my dual camera setup working and tested (well, “tested” in the basement, not under the stars) with quasi-realistic setup meaning I was running with my rig connected to a mini-PC connected to a wifi router and is providing a local access point (really local, as in not connected to the internet, but yes connected to all my gear). This lets me connect my laptop to more than one mount, each with it’s own dedicated mini-PC (yes, I have two) or to my Raspberry Pi4. The mini-PC/Pi4 are connected via a wired connection to the router, the only two wires running from the ground to the telescope are one USB cable (from the mini-PC/Pi4) and one 12V power line.

The point of the wifi AP is to provide a good strong signal so my laptop can connect while I sit comfy inside my canvas heated tent. And, of course, I could use RDP to remote control those mini PCs. Now if only the weather will cooperate.