Darkoshi

This evening has been like, am I having a spectacularly good dream?

Saturn & Jupiter. Yep, slightly less than a pinky apart tonight. I must admit, that distance would make for a larger than usual moon. But I still think that half a pinky would make for a TOO SMALL moon. So maybe the 1 degree pinkies which that handy guide goes by are bigger pinkies than mine.

Today I found that my camera can take acceptably good photos of stars in the sky, when using these settings: Exposure to the max (2+); ISO ~800; focus to infinity; using tripod; using self-timer to prevent camera shake right after pressing the button; position the camera so that it is in the shade from the street light.

The above exposure setting gave me a shutter speed of 1 second.

3 of the photos I took with the above settings show something moving through the constellation of Cassiopeia. 1 of those also shows a second object moving in the edge of the photo.

I wondered if those moving objects were high-up airplanes, or if they might be satellites.

Starlink - dynamic 3D orbit display. I had no idea there were THAT many satellites moving all over the sky (not geo-stationary). That display ONLY shows the Starlink ones. Per Wikipedia, there are currently about 900 Starlink satellites in orbit, and they have plans for launching more than 40 thousand! OMG, it will be a maze of moving objects.

This page: in-the-sky.org : Satellite Observing Opportunities let me check which satellites were crossing through and near Cassiopeia at the time I took those 3 photos.
This one, SL-3 R/B is the closest match to my photos, though not an exact match. Mine's path went thru the 2 left stars, not thru the middle ones. But it was going in the right direction, and at about that time. So I'm not sure if the website's chart is off, or if my object was something else*.
There were also several other satellites passing by that general area within a few minutes of it; one of these might be the other moving object:
SL-14 R/B
OKEAN-O
PSLV R/B
SL-8 R/B

*The offset was due to me not having entered my exact latitude and longitude on that page. Once I entered more exact values, it shows SL-3 R/B's path as having gone through the same 2 left stars which I saw. So most likely my photos *do* show that satellite !


Later this evening I discovered my camera can even take up to 15-second long exposures! (I'd been thinking of maybe upgrading my camera, not even realizing it could do that!) So after finishing up my work for the day, I took many more photos.

I didn't realize it at the time, but I even got a good photo of the Pleiades.

Jupiter, Saturn, and my pinky (couldn't get them all in focus at the same time)



Orion behind branches:


Pleiades in upper left:

I've set up one of my Wyze cams outside on the porch. Its power cable connects to the porch's lamp fixture. The lamp fixture has 2 candelabra-sized bulb sockets. I screwed a candelabra-to-regular-size socket adapter in one of the sockets, and into that a socket-to-outlet adapter. Into that, I plugged the Wyze cam's power adapter, which converts the 110V AC power to the 5V USB used by the camera.

With this setup, the lamp's power has to be kept turned on so that the camera can work 24/7. I'd like to have a bulb in the lamp's 2nd socket, but don't want the bulb on during the daytime.

I could use a daylight-sensor adapter along with a regular bulb. If the light were to be on all night, it should be a yellow bug-light to reduce the number of flying insects attracted to the porch area.

There are bug lights with candelabra bases. But when one adds a light sensor adapter to it, which also requires a socket adapter, they might not all fit into the lamp fixture. And daylight sensors haven't worked well for me in the past, especially under a porch roof which limits the amount of light that gets to the sensor.

I don't really want to keep the porch light on all night anyway. There's enough light from the nearby street lamp for most purposes.

So I instead tried out a remote-controlled color-changing light bulb. I can set it to an orange-yellow color, and can turn it on and off with the included remote. But I found that the remote control has to be fairly close to the bulb to work, and it doesn't work through the house wall.

If there's someone on the porch whose face you want to see more clearly before opening the door, having to step outside with the remote to turn on the light isn't practical.

Then I started thinking about smart bulbs controlled by wi-fi. Wyze now has smart bulbs, so I bought one of them to try out. These bulbs can be adjusted between warm & daylight whites but not to other colors. Therefore I wouldn't put it on the porch and leave it turned on all night, as that would attract insects. But it should suffice for intermittent on/off porch use.

To control the bulb, one can use the Wyze app on one's smartphone. That should work through the house wall just like the Wyze cam does. But I'd prefer a simpler and quicker way to turn the bulb on & off.

Qiao had bought an Echo Dot a long time ago, but for whatever reason never set it up. Lately, I've been curious to try it out. If I were to keep the echo dot near my front door, I should be able to turn the bulb on and off with voice commands without needing to touch my phone or have the phone nearby.

Setting up the Echo Dot requires using the Alexa app. I'm not sure I want to install Alexa on my phone, because of all the permissions it requires. Maybe I could disable some of the permissions that bother me, before it gets a chance to download all my contact info and texts to the Amazon servers somewhere, but I'm not sure.

I wouldn't mind installing Alexa on the iPad as I don't have much personal info on it, but the iPad is v9, and Alexa requires v11.

So now I'm looking if there's a way to set it up without having Alexa on my phone... Per this page, it may be possible: Can I set up and use an Echo without having a Smart phone?

I got to wondering if this approach would still work when the internet is down but my wi-fi is still up. My voice would activate the Echo Dot... would the Echo send a command message directly to the bulb? Or would it send a message over the internet to the Wyze servers or to some IFTTT server, which would then control the bulb? I'm not sure yet. (For that matter, does the Echo need to send my voice command to a server somewhere, to decode it and determine what command I am giving? I think it does. Otherwise Amazon's servers wouldn't have recordings of your voice commands, but from what I've read, they do. That would explain this report where all of a home's smart devices stopped working during an internet outage.)

All this because of that cam on the porch, and I'm not even sure I like it out there. It's too easy for someone to steal or vandalize. Pointing down from the soffit, it's field of view isn't even very good. I'd really like to install a few more cameras outside in other locations, but those aren't as well protected and don't have as easy access to a power supply, so would require more work.

But still, it is some fun trying these things out.

Wyze keeps coming out with neat new things. They're working on an outdoor camera that will be battery-powered. That will make things like this a lot easier, maybe.

..

Update, 2019/12/09:
Yesterday I also mounted a Wyze motion sensor above the front door. That lets me get a notification on my phone (if desired), or a video clip to be saved to the cloud when motion is detected in that area. The cams themselves have motion detection based on analyzing the video stream, but that gets triggered too often to be very useful (from branches moving in the wind, cars driving by, etc.). The motion sensor is triggered by body heat, so should be more discerning.

I had already mounted a contact sensor on the front door a week or so ago, which also lets you trigger events.

So last night I realized I could set up an IFTTT (if-this-then-that) trigger so that when motion is detected, to turn on the light bulb for a few minutes. I could also include conditions to only do it when it is after sunset, or only when the door is currently closed.

Then I realized I could mount another contact sensor on the inside wall by the door, with another trigger set up for it, and thereby have the sensor be a pseudo-light-switch (to be able to turn the light on without first opening the door), controlled by me manually moving one half of the sensor away from the other half.

But only as long as the internet and wi-fi are up and working.

Update, 2019/12/12:
I have discovered that the Wyze app lets you set up simple rules/triggers, so having an ifttt.com account isn't even necessary. The rules can be like "when motion is detected and it is between 8pm and 6am, turn on the light" or "if the light has been on for 5 minutes, turn it off", and so on.

note to self:
If camera seems to be taking crappy photos, check the ISO setting. In manual mode, I had apparently changed it to 3200 at some point, and it keeps that value even after shutting off and restarting the camera.

With that setting, photos of documents came out blurred and indistinct, even in good light. Oh, and with the flash on, the whole paper whited out.

Not sure about how safe this was to do, but the resulting video is awesome...


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M9cSxEqKQ78

Info on the making of the video here.

More such videos here.

This next video shows an "AR.Drone" helicopter, which is different than the flyer in the above videos, but just as nifty.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYvTJnWrH2Q

From http://www.jwz.org/blog