Greetings List,
A little off topic, but not too much. I'm a host for an "All Sky Camera"
through Sandia National Labs in Albuquerque, NM. I have been trying to get
things set up for some time and hope to be operational within a week. The
reason for my post; I'm in Lake Station, In. A camera is soon to be
operational in Terre Haute, In and we need one more host to establish a good
baseline . Preferably the host would be either in the Lafayette, Kokomo, In
area or in or around Bloomington Il. You would have to have a PC that you can
devote entirely to the camera. The software used is called Sentinel. The PC
used to run the Sentinel Software must meet minimum requirements:
1 GHz Processor
1 GB Ram
500 GB - 1 TB Hard Drive
CD ROM drive
1 Spare PCI slot available
An Internet connection so the camera can be treated as a network.
The software currently runs only on Windows machines. XP is the preferred
version to run with the software. Sandia provides the camera and housing, see:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/stevewitt/sets/72157626015869010/detail/
This will give you an idea of what the unit looks like. Sandia also provides a
Hauppage Video Capture Card that installs in the PCI slot on your PC and of
course the Sentinel software.
It is the responsibility of the host to install the camera in a suitable
location (with as much sky view as possible). Supply 110 V AC to the unit and
to run a coax cable from the camera to your PC. Once everything is set up you
program the system to activate above a certain light thresh hold and the system
will capture any and all events. Lots of times birds, airplanes etc .etc. A
good amount of meteors and hopefully on occasion a bolide event. It is up to
the host to go through the events captured and weed out the garbage, of course
look for entering meteoritic material. The camera housings are not all the same
as you can see in the above photos and the innards vary also, but to give you a
general idea, here are the specs on one system:
*CCD Hi-Cam Tech HB-710E / SONY
Image Device: 1/2" Interline Transfer CCD
Total Pixels: 811 x 508
Effective Pixels: 768 x 494
Pixel Size: 8.4 x 9.8
Resolution: 580 TV Lines
*Lens
Rainbow L163VDC4P
Focal Length: 1.6 ~ 3.4mm
Aperture: 1:1.4
Angular Field of View: 180° x 114.1° at 1.6mm
84.3° x 55.8° at 3.4mm
Iris: Auto-Iris
*Housing
4" PVC pipe
Flanged fittings
5" Acrylic Dome
Height: around 20" tall
*Internal Components
Heating Elements
Thermostat
Air Circulating Fan
All 110v AC
This is obviously not a first come first served deal. The host has to be
someone who will give this the proper attention it deserves. If you're
interested, please contact me off list. There are already at least 3? List
members who are hosting cameras. I consider it an honor to be a host and hope
you would feel the same. Any questions, please contact me off list and I'll do
the best I can to answer them. Thanks for your time.
Best,
Steve
Steve Witt
IMCA #9020
http://imca.cc/
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