Graphs uploaded here will now be a better representation of actual external air quality being mounted on the shed rather than being in the shed, probably still some slight cold/warm coupling to the shed as it is in contact with the shed, but much less than being actually in the shed with the doors closed. One problem exists in that I wired power direct to the pads on the pi and am using a pair of double 18650 AliExpress Chinese battery pack which are cool but not as efficient as they could be. Getting 12+ hours uptime from a pack but may be a delay in switching packs out and a step/spike in the graph if I let the sensor cool down between battery change as it warms up again. Really need to get a 100W solar panel on the shed (to probably get only 20W actual power at this time of year) enough to charge a “leisure battery” up during day.
The Irony of a CO2 shortage
Not been own-brand (neither expensive “mineral” nor own brand cheap fizzy tap water) fizzy water in local Morrisons for months! Was not in any old-brand supermarkets for a couple of months at least (Lidl still had some) but Sainsburies got fizzy tap water now and Tesco have own brand fizzy mineral water. BUT!!! sure the Tesco mineral water is less fizzy than it was! That is to say it used to be impressively fizzy.
The thing is, this is a several years old problem, I researched it and it is to do with carbon footprint and energy costs and shutting down production of compressed CO2 in the UK. Our leaders are severely substandard it seems to me, except in the fields of bullshit and cover-up at which they excel!
The Queen’s new vaccine!
Satellite videos working again
Not checked if satellite videos still working for a while, assumed it was.
I encountered a few problems having switched to an old raspberry pi-b to do the downloads and encoding which is also a SkyPiAQ test node, just to see how the hardware video encoding works using the omx mp4 encoder, I mean not bad, but quality is mediocre anyway. A vfat usb stick auto loading thing was the problem. Still, it is amazing how capable those old pi-b computers were. (and the pi zero).
So switched back to running on a Pi3, tried using h.265 but browser players not compatible enough, shame as it is like double space saving for same quality as standard h.264, so anyway sat vids for today back up with better quality videos.
Will get round to linking to all the missing videos.
Contrail Spider Web Morning Video- 11th October 2021
Cameras using new awb_mode
New awb_mode for raspberry pi NoIR cameras is now available to fix the pink hue of running auto white balance on the raspberry NoIR cameras. Myself I would call it greenworld, but it is definitely an improvement on the standard auto mode for NoIR cams.
in /boot/config.txt add the following line to end of file
awb_auto_is_greyworld=1
The Dimming, Full Length Climate Engineering Documentary ( Geoengineering Watch )
An Interesting documentary, I like the angle that he only cottoned on when he noticed his solar cell output drop! Of Course the marketing blurb on these panels is very probably far from the general truth
What it’s about, everyone could generate their own solar energy if the corporat-king laputans (laputans (laputa) are one of the sets of characters in Swifts, Gullivers Travels) were not blocking out the sunlight eh!
Videos June 2020
Videos May 2020 Part 2
Cameras down for upgrade
Will be back soon
Chaos Theory
If a butterfly flapping it’s wings can affect the weather, how much more can 1000+ megathrust aircraft flights a day across the Atlantic affect the “jetstream” and therefore the prevailing weather we in Britain get from the Atlantic….
The reason I say that is that we have had the most amazing Sunny weather in Britain since aircraft flights have been massively reduced due to this questionable covid-19 scare.
It’s an ill wind that blows nobody any good eh!
Unfortunately as a consequence of the lack of rain and increase in population, there could be some water shortages looming!
Strange cloud effects on 24th May 2020’s UK satellite video
Videos May 2020 Part 1
Chinese BME680 vs UK BME680
Update; 10 May 2020
Today, again you can see how the profile of the two Chinese/UK bme680’s are similar yet different, of course I really need to space these two devices equidistant around the central beam of the shed to get a much more similar airflow… so basically can see the Bosch driver is not bad given the large raw “ohms” difference between the two…
Seems to me the Chinese manufactured BME680 (tried 3) are sensitive to some set of conditions the UK manufactured ones are not, had one of my other prototypes with UK bme680 (SkyPiAQTest) in the shed alongside my prototype with chinese bme680 (SkyPiAQShed) that has been sat there for a while, all my prototypes running on the 1.8v 28day 3second reading using the bosch sensor library.
For comparative purposes it has to be said the Chinese sensor (SkyPiAQShed) is much more in direct airflow than other prototype (SkyPiAQTest)
The Particular prototype (SkyPiAQTest) with UK manufactured sensor has been used to take readings mainly in my office which may have bit of cigarette smoke in it from time to time, and I shifted it from that environment to the shed without a reset of the stored calibrations and actually they match quite well in terms of what the bosch driver returns as the “IAQ” but some odd peaks on the Chinese sensors IAQ readings…
And the Chinese sensor as I said in other post actually tops out at max bme680 “Ohms” range from time to time, much more frequently during the period of the covid-19 shutdown… where UK one does not
Though overnight air here consistently bad outside even with shed doors open…
here’s todays graphs of the two.
Though (SkyPiAQTest) was down (not working) for an hour or so as I am testing solar panel which seems to be working OK in short term.
At last some weather that can drive solar panels in UK eh!
(And… if you noticed the difference, the (SyPiAQShed) particulate sensor is of a batch that do read higher than another batch… tested about 7 of the particulate sensors so far… though is an age difference between the two, but the graph profile is pretty much the same.)
