Clear Sky/star count modules

[c0mpu73rallsky]

Hello and thank you for this great project!

I’m gradually building my remote observatory. Since I already have an all-sky camera (thanks to all the developers!), it feels natural to use the images to infer cloud presence and sky quality. Based on this, the system could automatically trigger the observatory to close and end the observation session for safety.

I know there are AI-based modules for cloud detection, but I’m aiming for something simpler and lighter to avoid overloading the Raspberry Pi. I noticed that TJ AllSky comes with two modules by default: clear sky and star counter, but I couldn’t find much documentation on them.

Regarding the clear sky module, I’m unsure if it’s actually working or what exactly it does. Is there any documentation or explanation about its logic or how to check if it’s active?

On the other hand, the star counter module works great. I’m considering a simple decision rule:
if star count < X, then visibility is poor.

Does this seem like a reasonable approach?

[Alex-developer]

The clear sky module counts the number of stars within a region of interest (ROI) in the image to determine if the sky is clear. Whilst it's not perfect it does give some idea. This is a perfectly reasonable approach. Just bear in mind that it can be very sensitive to moonlight so picking the ROI is pretty important, its a lot of trail and error !

The AI module is not that intensive as all of the training is handled by a third party, the module just does the 'lookup'.

In the next major release I have significantly improved the sky detection code, this will probably be out I the next couple of months

[c0mpu73rallsky]

Thank you Alex, I have to check my installation because my Clear Sky alarm seems not to work (at least doesn’t annotate any star). Star counter does work fine :)

Thank you for the update on the development! Together with the rain sensor, I think the remote observatory will be up quickly!