[scrps]

Even cheaper are esp32 boards. Seeed has tiny esp32c3 with camera included for $14 USD. Granted the camera module isn't the greatest but it may be good enough for sky tracking, there are also other camera modules.

I feel like RPis are overkill unless the data is being processed in situ (even then the rpi may be overkill compute) beyond just packaging it up digestibly to be crunched elsewhere.

[pjsg]

There are two challenges -- one is getting a sensitive enough camera to be able to record meteors. The Sony 'starlight' sensors have the required sensitivity. The next is to handle the data stream from the camera and to extra the meteor tracks from the video stream. Accurate timing of each frame is also important so that the meteors can be tracked from multiple cameras and the orbits calculated.

At my location, on most nights, I have far more aircraft crossing the field of view than meteors -- and that needs a far amount of compute to extract the signal from the noise.

A typical set of output from a nights run: https://globalmeteornetwork.org/weblog/US/US001N/US001N_2024... -- the first images is the all the meteors from the night (but it is clear that there are some aircraft there). The second image is all the tracks seen overnight and you can see that it is almost entirely aircraft.

[dylan604]

> I feel like RPis are overkill

I feel this way about most uses of RPis, but if it makes it more accessible and easier to use without the limitations of esp32 type boards then at least people are playing with things.

However, from TFA: "The Raspberry Pi computer analyses the video feed in real time to search for moving objects, "

[scrps]

Ah, I did miss that in the article!

I see the accessibility angle though I suppose if someone made a turn-key esp32-based sky tracker that might help get them adopted, save people money, and free up their pi.

[dylan604]

Exactly what advantage would an esp32 based system have that you think it would cause it to be adopted that this current system would not?