Baby Steps with My Night Sky Pi (Feb Update)

Well, February came and went in a blur. Between work deadlines and family stuff, my poor Night Sky Pi project got pushed to the back burner (story of my hobby life, right?). The few evenings I did have free, I mostly spent zoning out in front of Netflix rather than diving into code. Sometimes your brain just needs a break.

That said, I’ve managed to resurrect the project from its dormant state! The Pi is now happily clicking away in my backyard, grabbing shots from sunset to sunrise. It’s even doing some basic exposure adjustments on its own, which is pretty satisfying to see working.

One thing that’s bugging me is the timing - right now it’s shooting through the entire “night” period, including twilight. Most of those early evening and early morning shots are basically useless for what I want. I’m thinking I should tweak it to only start after astronomical twilight when it’s properly dark. That’s on the to-do list.

The system’s not doing anything fancy with the images yet - no processing or uploading to another system. It’s literally just taking pictures and saving them locally. Pretty basic, but hey, you’ve gotta start somewhere!

Next up on my list (assuming I can find some motivation and time this month) is getting the data packaging and transfer working. I’d also like to refine those exposure calculations - they’re functional but not exactly brilliant right now.

If anyone’s curious, all my code is up on GitHub. It’s not exactly elegant, but it’s getting the job done!