Finally Hit 1.0 with Night Sky Pi

So I’ve finally done it! My Night Sky Pi project has reached version 1.0.0, and I couldn’t be happier with how it turned out. Sure, this might not seem like a big deal to most people, but for me it marks the point where this little passion project actually does what I originally wanted it to do. I’m even confident enough that other folks might find it useful too.

When I first started, I had this checklist of things I absolutely needed it to handle:

• Grab nighttime photos automatically from sunset to sunrise (no more setting alarms!)
• Keep those images organized by date (because my inner neat-freak demanded it)
• Smart enough to adjust camera settings when things get too bright or dark
• Save all the nerdy image metadata in JSON files for later analysis
• Package everything up neatly for easy transfer
• Send MQTT messages at key moments so other systems know what’s happening
• Clean up old data automatically so my Pi doesn’t fill up
• Let me tweak all these settings without diving into the code

I’m pretty stoked that I’ve checked off every item on that list. The code quality isn’t too shabby either - decent test coverage and it passes all my Sonar quality gates (which honestly took longer than I expected).

What’s next? Probably just squashing bugs as they pop up, but the real fun begins with building add-on modules. I’ve already started work on nsp-ntfy to handle push notifications and nsp-data-sender for moving captured data off the device. Keeping these separate from the main project feels cleaner to me - the core should just focus on taking great night sky photos!