And this is the latest design revision for our raised beds. This is VegBed2, first built in 2005 out of mini garden ties. Over time they were thought to be strong, long lived and cost effective. Over 15 years later, they were none of the above. In addition to being too shallow, they rotted out, split and were a pain.
So, the old walls were removed and new 2×8 layers were put in. This gives us 15″ of soil depth, more than before. We also capped the top with 2x4s to help it maintain its straightness during the winter frost heave, that tends to push out the centres. This new bed is 4’x24′ and it actually more square footage than the older version.
In addition, the top cap will allow us to build a plastic cold frame hoop in the future.
The parts list is eight 2″x8″x8′ and seven 2″x4″x8′, black weed cloth lining the inside.
K vs Squirrel
The latest in the me vs squirrel battle. The squirrels refuse to believe the argument that a bird feeder is for birds and not Squirrels.
This is the latest rebuild of the bird feeder, with a lower clearance and wider roof, and a brand new design of squirrel baffle. So far it is 100% in blocking the black squirrels and the red squirrels. It is approx 24″x24″ of flexible thin tin.
A sign of the Covid19 times, the Colebrook playground is out of bounds.
We did a drive around the area, and actually there are very few indicators of anything out of sorts otherwise.
Just thinking back to the 2017 August 21st eclipse in Wyoming and could not find the air temperature data we took… so here it is, maybe again:
two great startrails
allsky1pi night of april 15/16
allsky1pi night of april 16/7
The allsky1pi camera system project is awesome. The last two nights have been relatively clear and the images it is generating are very nice!
These startrails are from the last two nights.
two nice meteors
Two nice meteors in the last two days:
North up, south down, west right, east left.
Saturday 2020 April 11, 04:13:07 UT = Saturday 2020 April 11, 00:13:07 EDT
This was a 4 second event: Video: https://starlightcascade.ca/allsky2/video/ev_20200411_041307A_10A.mp4
The new Allsky1Pi camera system also caught it:
And then another the same day but next night
North up, south down, west right, east left.
Sunday 2020 April 12 01:15:46 UT = Saturday 2020 April 11 21:15:46 EDT
This was a 9 second event: Video: https://starlightcascade.ca/allsky2/video/ev_20200412_011546A_10A.mp4
We are superduper happy with the allsky1pi camera project. It has better resolution and colour images over the older allsky1 system (2006-2018) running a very old SBIG ST237A camera system. It also required a desktop computer with parallel port for the camera controller box. Keeping a desktop running outdoors in the winter did have its challenges (numerous versions of blankets, wood boxes, multiple hard drive failures, etc). and not a small amount of electricity to run (80-100 watts 24h/365d)
(that’s approx 2.4kwh/day or 876 kwh/year at our average power price of $0.15 came out to about $130/year! (not counting the dome heating or the camera controller power). We run on time-of-use billing which gave us low rates for 12hr/day mon-fri and 24hr/day on weekends and holidays.
The new project runs on an ittybitty raspberry pi and comes in under 10w for the computer and camera combined. And that comes in at only $13/year all else being equal.
It has now been running for 31 days without intervention as well!
Love it!
pi@allsky1pi:~ $ uptime
08:54:02 up 31 days, 13:58, 3 users, load average: 0.01, 0.04, 0.05
pi@allsky1pi:~ $ free
total used free shared buff/cache available
Mem: 948304 117396 307052 11040 523856 756232
Swap: 102396 84288 18108
pi@allsky1pi:~ $ df -h
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/root 7.0G 4.3G 2.4G 65% /
/dev/mmcblk0p1 253M 52M 201M 21% /boot
The allskypi camera system is pretty much operational, subject to a few additional tweaks in the upcoming days. This is the first report giving background details:
allskypiCameraproject20200308v2
Many thanks to the original project creator: https://www.instructables.com/id/Wireless-All-Sky-Camera/
Future upgrades includes: dark frame image processing out hot pixels, a wider angle lens for more sky coverage, more text annotations onto the images, and possibly some active cooling of the housing to reduce the camera sensor temperature.
pi@allsky1pi:~/allsky $ cat settings.json
{
“width”:”0″,
“height”:”0″,
“exposure”:”90000″,
“maxexposure”:”90000″,
“autoexposure”:”1″,
“gain”:”50″,
“maxgain”:”200″,
“autogain”:”0″,
“gamma”:”50″,
“brightness”:”50″,
“wbr”:”53″,
“wbb”:”90″,
“bin”:”1″,
“delay”:”1000″,
“daytimeDelay”: “60000”,
“type”:”1″,
“quality”:”95″,
“usb”:”30″,
“filename”:”image.jpg”,
“flip”:”0″,
“text”:”text”,
“textx”:”15″,
“texty”:”30″,
“fontname”:”0″,
“fontcolor”:”255 255 255″,
“smallfontcolor”:”0 0 255″,
“fonttype”:”0″,
“fontsize”:”0.7″,
“fontline”:”1″,
“outlinefont”:”0″,
“latitude”:”44.4N”,
“longitude”:”76.77W”,
“angle”:”-6″,
“time”:”1″,
“darkframe”:”0″,
“showDetails”:”1″
}
Allskypi is an allsky camera system with a ZWO ASI 120MC camera and wide angle lens protruding out into a 4″ transparent dome, with the remainder of the camera and the raspberry pi beneath it in the housing.
The dome was condensing and frosting, so we added a heater inside the dome.
Now the sensor temperatures are higher than we would like, but the condensing and frost problems seem to be fixed.
The holes in the lid were drilled pre-dome-heater, hoping to have hot air from inside the housing rise up into the dome.
Now perhaps the holes are allowing hot air from the domeheater to infiltrate back into the housing and heat up the camera sensor.
I plotted the temperatures of the sensor, air and dew from our nearby weather station and got this below.
So looking at this graph, what more can be done to lower the camera sensor temperature (which causes more hot pixels in a 60 second exposure)?
Idea 1) plug the holes in the lid to stop airflow from dome to housing
Idea 2) add vent holes at the top of the housing, below the lid and dome, to allow hot housing air to escape.
Idea 3) build some kind of airconditioner.. ie a Peltier cooler, to cool air inside the housing.
Idea 4) add a spacer between the bottom of the camera and its mount for better air flow.
Come warmer air temps in the summer, the sensor temp will definitely get too high… already in the last two weeks it has hit 15C!
Seedy Saturday 2020
**CANCELLED due to COVID9***
From https://www.kingstonist.com/news/seedy-saturday-offers-local-green-thumbs-an-early-start-to-their-gardening/
Gardeners, from novice to expert, take note: The Kingston Area Seed System Initiative (KASSI) will be holding their annual Seedy Saturday on Saturday, Mar. 14, 2020.
“Seedy Saturday is a warm-spirited celebration of seeds, gardening and community,” says Dianne Dowling, Kingston Area Seed System Initiative board member. “By March, gardeners are really looking forward to the end of winter, and the start of the growing season, but it’s too early for outdoor gardening. So, they come to Seedy Saturday, and have a great time, browsing among the seed packages at the vendor displays and the seed swap table. I tell people to come to Seedy Saturday with a list, because otherwise, you’ll want to buy one of everything!”
“This year is the 13th annual Kingston Seedy Saturday,” Dowling continues. “A measure of how people have responded to Seedy Saturday is that we keep outgrowing our locations. It started out on Wolfe Island, then moved to the Wilson Room at the downtown branch of the Kingston Frontenac Public Library. Then we held it at Unitarian Place on Concession Street. We have been in the auditorium in LCVI for a few years now, which is a great place for our event. Lots of light and open space in the auditorium, room for our workshops and a lunch area, accessible by car, bus or on foot, and easy for the vendors and community groups to move their displays in and out. It seems to be just the right size to give the event a great community feel — lively and varied, but not crowded or overwhelming.”
Old DSLR
A review of our 1st Digital Single Lens Reflex camera:
Canon 300D (circa 2003) bought used for $100
Features:
USB 1.1 (very slow in transferring images off via USB cable to computer)
CF memory card (very slow saving files, low capacity)
1.8″ rear display is small and fixed
6MP APS-C sensor
No live view on display
Video: No
RAW format Yes
ISO 1600 max
We have used it for astrophotography using 18-55mm for widefield night photography and a75-300 zoom lens with a 58mm solar filter for daytime solar photography.
It is not the greatest but can do 30sec exposures on Manual. In Bulb mode and with the intervalometer, much longer exposures can be made.
L&A Hort met this week
The Lennox and Addington Horticultural Society met this week, on Wednesday, 2020 February 19th at our new location of St. Patricks Church, 179 West St, Napanee. Ample free parking across the street, meeting room in the new addition.
23 members and guests were in attendance.
The invited guest speaker was Elaine Collins, President of the Gananoque Horticultural Society, who spoke on English Garden Experiences, a travelogue of 5 gardens.
The meeting adjourned at 8:45pm
Our website is:
https://gardenontario.org/view/society-layout/entry/638/
FYI their (Gananoque) dues are Membership -$20 SINGLE $25 FAMILY
Kingston Hort dues: $20/person; $25/family; Visitors $3.00
Collins Bay dues: $10/person; $15 family
Brockville dues: $10 single & $15 family
Belleville dues: $15 or $25 family
Bath dues: $10 single, $15 family
Bancroft dues: single – $15; family – $20
Ameliasburgh dues: $12 per person
Land’o’Lakes dues: $20 per person
Prince Edward County dues: $15 single, $25 Family
Rideau Lakes dues: $15
Stirling dues: Adult $15, Youth $2
Trenton dues: $15 per person
Tweed dues: $12 single and $16 family. Junior members: $1 per year (ages 8 to 17). Non-member fee per meeting is $3.
Lastly, our dues here in L&A: Fees are $10 single, $12 Family
histogram single membership: 4@$10, 2@$12, 6@$15, 3@$20
histogram family membership: 1@$12, 3@$15, 1@$16, 1@$20, 1@$24, 4@25, 3@$30, 1@$40
L&A have the lowest fees in the district.
One math challenge was brought up:
Tomato seeds are more expensive than gold. True or false?
The internet says there are 8-10k seeds/ounce. I find that hard to believe but will go with it until I get scale and measure some seeds myself.
Let’s work in metric.. because.
28g=1oz so 8k seeds in 28g = 285 seeds/g
Retail catalogue pricing of tomatos seeds tends to be 10 for $5 or $.50 each. We will go with our own SCGO heirloom tomato seed pricing of 20 seeds for $2 or $0.10 each
So Tomato seeds one gram 285 seeds @ $0.10 is $28.50/g
Todays price of gold is $52.15/g
So… tomato seeds are *NOT* as or more expensive than gold… BUT if you buy at retail prices of x5 over our benchmark then yes, they can be double the price of gold.