[gaustad18 (AJ)]

Hey guys,

This is my first post on the forum, so I've got a lot of questions and hope to get a lot of opinions on this subject! I've been researching allsky cameras for the past couple of weeks, and I've thought about making my own allsky camera in order to capture meteors and fireballs. I've recently become interested in meteorite tracking as well, and although unlikely, it would be awesome to catch a fireball that could then lead to a meteorite fall. I guess if I had a goal for this project, it would be to create a low-maintenance allsky camera that could be used to capture fireballs and could withstand the harsh winters we get here in Minnesota. I've looked at the SETI cams system and I've browsed through allsky.ca's database of all of their registered cameras in order to get an idea of what systems/software they use.

I'm looking to build an allsky system with a weatherproof housing that can go on top of my roof. I'm looking to spend about $500 bucks for all of the equipment. I'm looking for a low-maintenance camera that could be wired (or ideally, remotely controlled, if that is even possible) from the roof into my house. I'm not a tech expert and don't have any background in coding or anything, so I'd like to keep it pretty simple and easy to use. I could make the housing out of PVC pipe.

I've looked at the pre-built allsky cameras, and most of them are discontinued or very expensive (Moonglow technologies, AllSky 340, etc.). The following cameras seem to be pretty popular: HiCam HB-710E, PC164C camera, Watec 902H2, and some other Celestron models.

The most popular lens that I have seen is the Rainbow L163VDC4P. What are all your thoughts on this lens?

Another critical part of this project is the software. The popular options seem to be ASGARD, UFOCapture, and Sentinel. I'm not sure if all of these are publicly available and how much they cost... What do you guys think is the most reliable and commercially available software package? Also, would I be able to hook up my camera to automatically start each night and then wirelessly feed images/video to my laptop? Or would it have to be a wired connection?

So I guess my final questions are: What are the best camera and lenses to use for an allsky camera? What is the most reliable, user-friendly, and accessible software? And what are the costs associated with these? How do I go about actually building this thing?

Any information and links to DIY builds would be immensely helpful! I'm sure there is still a lot to learn!

Also, I've also been looking at the AMS website for their fireball network, and I'm wondering what kind of cameras they use...