village idea for #emfcamp ... Now a village plan

https://www.emfcamp.org/villages/2026/102-astro-observability-stargazing-things

Name: Astro Observability
Theme: stargazing things
Equipment I'll bring: 200p / 250p goto Dobsonian telescope, weather station, maybe an all-sky camera, maybe a Raspberry Pi with a Grafana instance to make all this available throughout the site.

complications: needs power, needs a tent to store things and keep them dry... but also needs open sky to see stars.

ideal would be to have some space around the scope and invite others with Dobsonians to join the village so that there's not a queue for a single scope.

another ideal is that this is safe to leave unattended... fine for the scope as it weighs 50kg, can install weather and other things on a scaffold pole so it's hard to steal or tamper with.

stargazing things are basically socials... people chat, flirt, have a drink, occasionally look through a scope and curse that we're standing on a rock spinning in space and that we need to re-align the scope to the object again.

this could work... and is on theme... but is it gay enough?

@dee I think #EMFCamp is the spiritual home of not doing things by halves, and that your plan is exactly in that spirit. You will certainly not regret an 11/10 effort to establish something this cool... :-D

Also: I would be interested in learning more about your weather station. I want to put one in my garden that's sufficient for local forecasting, and outputs data in a recognised open format, to integrate with Home Assistant and weird radio projects...

@m0rpk weather station needs acquiring, building and coding.

I was doing the ADHD thing of giving myself a deadline to inspire adequate panic that will result in something.

Research begins this evening.

@dee Gotcha! I'm very aware this is gonna become a hyperfocus rabbit-hole if I'm not careful.

Mind you, I'm already half-way down that rabbit-hole, as the purpose of the weather station will be to improve the automation of my newly-acquired garden irrigation system, which I'd be outside setting up right now if it weren't currently raining... 🤦‍♂️

@dee Here's where I've got to so far:

Weather station - Ecowitt looks like a good option, especially since this incredible resource exists: https://meshka.eu/Ecowitt/dokuwiki/doku.php

Forecasting: I'm going to base my system on Home Assistant. These links are especially interesting to me:

https://github.com/wajo666/homeassistant-local-weather-forecast

https://github.com/bachya/ecowitt2mqtt

@m0rpk this matches what I've found.

• Ecowitt Wittboy (GW2000 + WS90) has local HTTP API and custom push, works offline, there's a Prometheus exporter too which allows Grafana installation.

https://github.com/djjudas21/ecowitt-exporter
https://jonathangazeley.com/2023/06/27/ecowitt-weather-stations-prometheus-and-grafana/
https://crondallweather.co.uk/crondall-weather-online-store/ecowitt-wittboy-with-sonic-anemometer-haptic-rain-gauge-gateway-gw2001/