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Corvidae Software
Simple | Elegant | Solutions
The Moon Pi.
Field astro-photography has its challenges one of which is electrical power management. My last trip to the Oregon Star Party included multiple batteries and a solar panel. Even with all of that that the power drain from my imaging laptop was a limiting factor. An informative talk given by Duncan Kitchin, and some lost imaging time due to depleted batteries made me wonder just how minimal could I go?
The Moon Pi was my answer... Based on a Raspberry Pi II ARM based computer, with Linux as the OS, this little beauty consumes so little power it makes a mockery of my big hungry laptop. Shown below with a powered USB hub and the QSI683 CCD imager if controls, not only is it's power consumption small, so is it's physical footprint. I literally can Velcro the computer to the telescope to minimize stray cabling to trip over. And to further sweeten the pi, the connection to the Moon Pi is over WiFi, so the imaging session can be controlled from just about anywhere.