A couple of weeks ago we started getting intermittent network connectivity to the observatory and to the two data gathering systems running there.
Yesterday the cable break was temporarily repaired. Data is flowing again. Sometime in the spring we are planning on running a new 30m cat6 cable out there, buried in the ground with some kind of protection.
A lot of the extreme hot/cold cycles in temperature that we’ve been getting over the last month is the mot likely culprit, with the exposed parts of the cable getting frozen in a snow/ice mix and then with the heating.cooling cycles, the cable came apart at the site of the previous patch.
That previous patch lasted a few years, caused by a bunny chewing its way through the cable completely.

This is a test using Picasa v3.9 for cr2118
Success! So, the object is to easily generate a nicely laid out page of thumbnail images linking to the larger resolution originals. So we collected all of the images into a single folder, ran google picasa v3.9 to index that folder, then exported the folder as html.
Once done we FTP the entire folder up to a web server for display.
This simplifies a longer, more complex process that was used in the past, saving time and lowering stress

L&A HortSoc (code for Lennox and Addington Horticultural Society) met last night (Wednesday January 18th, 2012) at a new location, the Napanee FireHall Training Room.
We’ve talked for some time about moving out of the County building meeting rooms, what with their small size, a nasty steep ramp down that made for dangerous use of walkers and other aids.
Lots of parking out back, a good, wider room, more suitable to meeting presentations than a longer narrow room, and lots of chairs. We set up a head table for the President to work from and another table for the membership and secretary to work from. On the side was a smaller snack table and at the back was a table for various handouts and information.

Upcoming gardening related events:
2012 February 24-26 (Fri-Sun) Kingston Garden Festival, also now in a new venue at the old Northern Telecom plant on Gardiners Road.

2012 March 16-25 Canada Blooms in Toronto. We are not organizing a trip but McCoy Bus Service and Tours is:
March 21, 2012 Canada Blooms $79 + HST
March 22, 2012 Canada Blooms $79 + HST
March 24, 2012 Canada Blooms $79 + HST

April 5-7, 2012 Peterborough Garden Show
The show will take place on Easter Weekend in 2012 at the Evinrude Centre, 911 Monaghan Road, Peterborough. The dates and times follow.
Thursday, April 5, 5 p.m. – 9 p.m.
Friday, April 6, 10 a.m. – 6 p.m.
Saturday, April 7, 10 a.m. – 4 p.m.
$6.00 admission per person (children 14 and under are free). The coat check is free.

2012 April 23 Monday Master Gardener Ed Lawrence Talk – April 23, 2012
The GrassRoots Growers of Tamworth will host CBC Radio personality Ed Lawrence from 7 to 9pm. Ed will speak for an hour on tips and tricks for gardeners followed by a random question section. Tickets are $15pp.
Location: Tamworth Legion
Contact: grassrootsgrowers@gmail.com

Snack schedule
2012 January: Karen
February: Barb
March: Kim & Kevin
April: Maggie
May: no one yet
June: MacPherson House Potluck, no snacks required
July, August: field trips and BBQs, no snacks required
September: no one yet
October: no one yet
November: Mary
December: potluck, no snacks required

Tonights meeting consisted of 20-25 minutes of announcements about upcoming events, a request to members to grow annuals for the plant sale in May, not yet firmly scheduled but most likely on the Saturday of the May Long Weekend, coinciding with the opening of the Farmers Market in Napanee.
After that we watch an 30-40 minute episode of a gardening program and then broke for questions and snacks.

Time to start planning the summer vegetable beds. Rather than micromanage this to extremes, we thought this year to rather just plan out the three major crops and fit the rest in as we went.

It helps that the garlic is already planted, back in the fall of 2011. That leaves the tomatos and potatos.
We use the planting records of the last 3 years to try and avoid planting the same plant in the same bed. This kind of crop rotation should help reduce some problems with soil and bugs.
We will be adding in some sheep manure to the beds, probably about 1 bag per 50 ft^2. Add to that the pile of compost we’ve been making for the last year.

We attached a UPS to the radiojove system last night (netbook data recorder only, first), only to have the external netbook power supply fail and 7 hours after that the battery was drained and it shut down.
Once that gets fixed, we’ll attach the radiojove receiver as well and all will be good.

Jupiters declination in mid 2010 (when we assembled the antennas) is approx 0 degrees and is increasing. It’s elevation based on our latitude of approx 45 degrees will be approx 45 degrees and increasing.

The optimum antenna height above ground for 40-55 degrees is 15′, so we assembled the mast for that height.

JEA=JupiterElevationAngle; AH=AntennaHeight
2010 Jul1 JEA=45deg AH=15′
2011 Jan1 JEA=43deg AH=15′
2011 Jul1 JEA=56deg AH=10′
2012 Jan1 JEA=55deg AH=15′
2012 Jul1 JEA=65deg AH=10′
2013 Jan1 JEA=65deg AH=10′

It looks like it is time this spring to lower the antennas down from 15′ to 10′

On December 16th, 2011 the laptop computer running the radiojove data logger had a hard drive failure. The Radiojove system continues to run but nothing has been logged or recorded since then… up until a couple of days ago.
We had no spare laptop with a working audio port so it wasn’t until this week that a new netbook was ordered and we were able to bump some systems around and get our first generation netbook hooked into the system.
The netbook is inside the environmental case in the observatory and so far looks quite toasty warm in our -10 C conditions. The last few days have been spent reconfiguring all of the complex system to get data logging, audio logging, audio conversion of .wav to .mp3, ftp uploads to this website, creation of the last 24 images on one page and more.
As of this (Saturday) morning, it looks like it is all operational again.
The netbook is running Windows7 starter, 1gb RAM, 250gb drive and an intel atom N450 single core two thread CPU @ 1.66GHz. These specs are certainly better than the old laptop that was previously installed.
One big downside is that windows 7 starter does not come with remote desktop hosting ability, so we were forced to switch over to ultravnc, which does not come with local audio capability.
the upshot is that we can no longer tune in from inside the house to listen to the live audio feed, we can only listen to the audio capture after the fact of loud events.

We picked up an outdoor wildview trail camera, in an effort to see exactly how big the problem of deer wandering through the yard and eating everything out of the flower beds.
Bad News… In three days there were two visits.


Cute little thing. And then this morning.. a coyote walking through the back yard. But we didn’t get an image of that.

One of the christmas gifts was a USB GPS receiver, the BU353.
As it turns out, for our intended uses of using it strictly as an accurate source of time for video annotation, it is very complicated.

From the manufacturer:
The BU-353 GPS Receiver can be utilized in a variety of applications which require GPS signals to be received and decoded in your Windows laptop or tablet PC, and for Mac users, their iBooks or Powerbooks. Compatible with most all NMEA compliant third-party software, the BU-353 is suitable for use in vehicle, marine and aviation navigation, as well as commercial and municipality applications such as fire trucks, police cars, buses, GIS data collection and much more!The BU-353′s slim profile housing is completely water resistant and incorporates an active patch antenna for the highest level of GPS accuracy. With a 60″ cable, placement of the GPS receiver anywhere within the vehicle will usually get sufficient GPS signal reception, but in those rare occurrences when towering high-rises offer challenging satellite reception, simply place the BU-353 on the vehicle’s roof (attaches with its built-in magnet) for improved reception.Since power and data are transferred through the same USB cable from the BU-353, there’s no need for batteries or any other external power source.BU-353W Package Contents: BU-353RB USB GPS Receiver (1) Suction Cup CD-ROM (User Manual & GPS Info Test Utility)

The technical specs are: Product Description
Features: * SiRF Star III High Performance GPS chipset – WAAS * High sensitivity (Tracking Sensitivity: -159 dBm) * Extremely fast TTFF (Time To First Fix) at low signal level * Support NMEA 0183 data protocol * Built-in SuperCap to reserve system data for rapid satellite acquisition * Built-in patch antenna * Super-cohesive magnetic for mounting on the car * USB interface connection port * Waterproof and non-slip on the bottom * LED indicator for GPS fix or not fix LED OFF: Receiver switch off LED ON: No fix, signal searching LED Flashing: Position fixed Specifications: * Chipset: SiRF Star III v3.1.1 firmware WAAS Enabled * Frequency: L1, 1575.42 MHz * C/A code: 1.023 MHz chip rate * Channels: 20 channel all-in-view tracking * Sensitivity: -159 dBm * Accuracy Position: 10 meters, 2D RMS ~ 5 meters, 3D RMS WAAS enabled * Velocity: 0.1 m/s * Time: 1us synchronized to GPS time Datum: * Default: WGS-84 Acquisition Time: * Reacquisition: 0.1 sec., average * Hot start: 1 sec., average * Warm start: 38 sec., average * Cold start: 42 sec., average Dynamic Conditions: * Altitude: 18,000 meters (60,000 feet) max * Velocity: 515 meters /second (1000 knots) max * Acceleration: Less than 4g * Jerk: 20m/sec Power: * Main power input: 4.5V ~ 6.5V DC input * Power consumption: 80mA * Protocol Electrical level: TTL level, * Output voltage level: 0V~2.85V * Baud rate: 4,800 bps * Output message: NMEA 0183 GGA, GSA, GSV, RMC, VTG, GLL Physical Characteristics: * Dimension: 53mm diameter, 19.2mm height * Cable length: 65″ * Operating temperature: -40C to +85C

We tried to install this on a windows 7 starter toshiba netbook and it failed to work.
We then tried on a Windows XPPro desktop and it worked.
First, without plugging in the unit, we ran the driver install from the cdrom. It installed a prolific USB to serial comm port adapter, set to Com3.
The windows device manager shows the adapter but also another device without any drivers. Nothing could get this unknown device to install drivers, so I uninstalled it and it went away.
Plugging in the GPS device worked without any device errors. The disk contained a GPS Info program that came up in setup mode, showing com3 and 4800 baud. Starting the device and moving the receiver close to a window, it eventually got a GPS fix, showing date, time (to only second accuracy), direction, speed, and two variables that I am not sure what they mean: HDOP: 1.4 and PDOP 2.2
It is showing a very accurate latitude and longitude that agrees with our earlier gps unit data.

Now we just have to find software that can pull out of the receiver sub-second time data.

We had time to inspect the allsky camera dome for the first time since its renovation a month ago. Things are looking very good. The inside platform is completely dry, the heaters are working fine (33 ohms combined at 24vdc giving 17.5 watts of heat). The heaters are hot to the touch but being elevated makes for better heat circulation, especially since the new fan continues to work well.
In addition more cleaning of the lens to try and get a cleaner surface. The camera was also reoriented a little to try and line it up with north a little better.

We added a swatch of dark cloth to cover the camera body, so as to help reduce the reflections in the dome that we have been seeing since the renovation.
Lastly, a taller light shield was built to help block residential lighting from reflecting around the camera.