Category Archives: Amateur Science

Testing Paint for Solar Heating

Posted on June 8, 2020 by

An upcoming project has an enclosure for electronics that is exposed to sunlight. I wanted to see if silver or white color paint was better at reducing the solar heating in the enclosure. I picked 5 different spray paints to … Continue reading →

Posted in Amateur Science, Astronomy, environmental monotoring | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Air Quality Sensor

Posted on July 18, 2019 by

An air quality sensor (dust sensor) has been on my todo list for a while. There are a number of sensor modules on the market for the DIYer but all that I had seen seemed to not be suited for … Continue reading →

Posted in Amateur Science, citizen science, Electronics, environmental monotoring, Imbedded Software, Nature, Software | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Telescope Mount Adapter

Posted on June 25, 2019 by

The University of Iowa donated the Rigel robotic telescope to the Cedar Amateur Astronomers. Plans are to install this telescope in one of the domes at the observatory. To mount the scope an adapter is needed to connect the scope … Continue reading →

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Rain Sensor

Posted on January 1, 2019 by

I thought it would be interesting to add a rain sensor to my tipping bucket rain gauge. Because it take time for the bucket to fill and does not always tip right when it stops raining a sensor that detects … Continue reading →

Posted in Amateur Science, Astronomy, DIY, Electronics, environmental monotoring, Imbedded Software, Nature, Software | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Barn Door Star Tracker

Posted on October 21, 2018 by

I wanted to take some star pictures with my DSLR and decided a barn door style star tracker would be a fun project to build. Early versions were nothing more than two boards connected by a hinge with a screw … Continue reading →

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UVA UVB Sensor

Posted on March 1, 2018 by

I have a commercial UV Index sensor running but I found an IC sensor chip that would measure UVA and UVB separately and thought it would be interesting to see how the two UV bands varied with respect to each … Continue reading →

Posted in Amateur Science, DIY, Electronics, environmental monotoring, Imbedded Software, Nature | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

IoT Rain Gauge

Posted on February 2, 2018 by

On thing that is missing from my weather station is automatic reporting of rain fall. I have a manually read CoCoRaHS rain gauge which is more accurate than say a tipping bucket gauge but I thought it would be nice … Continue reading →

Posted in Alternate Energy, Amateur Science, Electronics, environmental monotoring, Nature, Software | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Eclipse 2017

Posted on August 22, 2017 by

I was not up to driving over a 100 miles in hope of finding clear sky in the path of eclipse totality. So I decided to make the most of what could be observed at home where we had about … Continue reading →

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Fan Aspirated Temperature Sensor

Posted on November 23, 2015 by

The temperature sensor for my weather station is a commercial wireless temperature/humidity sensor that I have mounted in a commercial solar radiation shield. It has been in operation for a couple of years and seems to be reasonably accurate. The … Continue reading →

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Wren Trouble

Posted on July 18, 2014 by

This morning I went out to change the bucket on my digger. It has two buckets, one narrow one for trenching and a wider one for moving dirt. There was a tiny bird sitting on the digger arm cussing me … Continue reading →

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