Here you can see the two electronic boxes (USB-Card and Relais Box). With this great parts you can not only control the Roll-Off Roof. You can also control you‘re whole Equipment e.g. Mount, CCD-Camera etc.. So it is a all in one solution with great features for remote operation. So I can strongly recommend it ! (The picture was made just during the installation process)

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To get weather data and with it weather protection, I‘ve decided to install three different units.


  1. 1.Davis Weather Station Vantage Pro 2


This Station is looking for all kind of basic data, e.g. Wind, Windspeed, Pressure, Rainfall...

I like it very much, because it is very interesting for me to observe the weather and get continuously data about it. I‘ve installed it with the Davis stuff at the North-Side from my Observatory as you can see it here:

The Davis station comes with a lot of features. The station has a very good hardware, so you can call it a semi professional weather station.


If you are interested in a Davis Weather Station, please take a look here:


http://www.davisnet.com/weather/products/weather_product.asp?pnum=06152


But to get nice results for your website and the right data for the Observatory control unit (e.g. ScopeDome) you need some more software stuff. I would like to recommend the WeatherLink Software:


http://www.davisnet.com/weather/products/weather_product.asp?pnum=06555

2. AAG-Cloud Watcher


The second unit is a cloud watcher. There are different units at the market. As usual they have all advantages and disadvantages. But from the cost-/benefit ratio and if you are looking for a reliable solution I would like to recommend the AAG-Cloud Watcher. It has a build in FTP upload solution, so you can easily  embed it to your webpage. Also most of the Observatory control software out there can handle her data.  Below you can see the unit itself and how I‘ve installed her at my Observatory. For more infos please visit the website from AAG:


http://tienda.lunatico.es/AAG-CloudWatcher-cloud-detector-1

3. AllSky-Cam


The third unit is a All-Sky Cam. There are also different units at the market. The well known SBIG Cameras where the first for amateur purpose but today we have more stuff like:


- SkyEye

  1. -Moonglow

  2. -Orion

  3. -StarlightExpress


etc.



I‘ve had the Moonglow (the cheapest) and the StarlightExpress Oculus. But after all, from my experiences I would highly recommend the SkyEye. It comes with a very good Hardware and a outstanding Software package. With this Software, you can easily upload the data to your webspace. It comes also with a day / night detection and much more... The price for this camera is more than fair, so for me we all should support manufactures like AllSky, which produce such a cool stuff for a fair price.


Here you can find more informations:

http://interactiveastronomy.com


Below you can find my Installation a the southern part from my Observatory:

And here you can see a Overview from the Observatory with all the three units installed.

So, here you can monitor some of the data, which were collected by those units. You're Browser will be permanently updated, so you  will get alway the actual data from my Observatory.


So you are welcome to visit „Remote“ here at my website !


If you are looking for the last step, please visit Part V