21 cm Detector Day 9

Today we continued work on the webcam. We have run into errors of not being able to find package. i may have found a way to stream it through the ip address. We believe that if we can properly locate the ip address on one of the school computers, we will be able to see the video feed that is coming from the webcam. We plan to visit Union College to test the detector on their radio telescope.

ASC: Making Headway

Kenny and I have been working on creating a video out of the images we can get from the All Sky Camera. We also have a code that compares the differences in each image to see what has moved, or how the images are different. This has all been done in matlab and we will need to convert the code into python. There are a few things we'll need to change in the code such as how many images it can take and how to generalize the code so that it will make a new movie every day and put it on the website. This way on the homepage of the website there will be a movie of all the images from the day before, or something along those lines.

Weather Station: Day 9 - May 30

This morning we emailed Davis, the weather station company, about the wind sensor problem. We are still waiting for a response. We also set up a circuit using AM2302 sensor which measures temperature and humidity. We still have to download the code from:
learn.adafruit.com/dht/connecting-to-a-dhtxx-sensor
in order to read the temperature and humidity on the raspberry pi.

Today we set up another circuit identical to the one we made a couple days ago. We had an extra RFM12b so we soldered wires to the chip and connected wires and resistors in a circuit with a breadboard and the arduino just like before. We want to test to see if the RFM is working so we are going to try to get the two RFM transceivers to talk to one another. We found code that we will upload on one arduino to transmit information and on the other arduino to receive the information. The code is found on the following website:
https://www.inkling.com/read/arduino-cookbook-michael-margolis-2nd/chapter-14/recipe-14-6

We also have a link to a website that has the library that we need and the instructions on how to import it into the arduino IDE:

http://jeelabs.net/projects/jeelib/wiki

We will follow these instructions on Monday and hopefully get the two RFM transceivers to talk to one another so we can verify that the problem doesn't involve the RFM transceiver. This would mean that the problem would most likely be in the code or the connection between the weather station and the RFM.

Muon Detector Day 8 and Day 9

Day 8:
Today we brainstormed ways to configure a structure that would hold our tank of fluid and paddles in place.  After making some sketches and taking measurements we went out shopping for materials and bought a shelving unit.

Day 9:
This morning after putting together our shelves we realized it was about an inch too narrow to hold our tank.  We remeasured everything and and went back out and bought a different structure.  This time we were more cautious and bought a metal unit instead of wood because the chemicals in the tank are flammable.  We put the shelves together and our tank fits perfectly this time.

21 cm detector Day 8

Today we continued work on getting the webcam to work. We were able to get the motion detector running on the webcam. We are unable to locate where the image is being sent. We are trying to send the images that are captured by the webcam to a dropbox for storage. We are having difficulty downloading dropbox however.
We also found that sudo nano /etc/motion/motion.conf allows us to adjust things such as the contrast and brightness. It also talks about the capabilities of motion. While in that file, I was able to find that there is such a thing as video4linux. I hope that this will allow us to stream the video that the camera finds.

Weather Station: Day 8- May 29

Today we set up the Vantage Pro2 weather station again. We are very close to getting this working completely, but the wind data isn't showing up on our computer software. The wind data also isn't showing up on the main console so we think there is a problem with the connection. We tried unscrewing the wind cups and turning everything off but everything suggested in the manual didn't work. We have this installed on a Windows 8 computer which we thought was our problem, but all of the information seems to be transferring so the wind connection seems to be the problem now.

The rest of the day we tried to get the RFM transceiver working by running the code. Dr. Cummings tried to help us debug the code but the same line of code that we had problems with yesterday is still giving up problems. He said he was going to do some research and try to help us again tomorrow.

We also soldered on an antenna to the RFM12B. It is 7.8cm long because the following link shows that this is the correct size for our 915 MHz transceiver:  http://openenergymonitor.org/emon/buildingblocks/rfm12b-wireless

We used a multimeter to test each wire and resistor in the circuit to make sure there were no problems with the connections. We had no problems with any of the connections. Tomorrow we hope to figure out what is wrong with the code.

Weather Station: Day 7 - May 28

We first tried to test different temperature and humidity sensors because we were waiting for permission to solder the RFM12b transceiver. We could not get the other sensors to work. We are thinking that we might need to connect the circuit differently or even use different code. We will look into this more when we have time.

We completed the circuit today by soldering the wires to the RFM12b transceiver. Then we tried following the code from this site:
 http://nikseresht.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/lacrosse_recv_915.txt
The code compiled but is not showing the data that it should. We met with Dr. Cummings who is familiar with the language and then we got it to print something but still not the right thing. We tried going back into the code and putting print statements in certain spots to see where the code stopped working. We are having difficulties with a certain line of code and we will work more on this tomorrow.

This shows our completed circuit that will read signals from the La Crosse Weather Station. 

Muon Detector Day 7

We started today by checking what the efficiency of the old scintillator fluid was after leaving it over night.  It ended up being almost 50% efficient which was higher than we expected but obviously still not very good.  Next, we changed the fluid from the mason jar to the new fluid.  To do this we had to go to a chem lab to dispose of the fluid correctly and work under a fume hood.  It was quite the process trying to get a small amount of fluid out of the 5 gallon tank without spilling everywhere but we were successful in doing so.  We then set up the apparatus again, this time with the new fluid and left it running for 2.5 hours.  This time it was 97.6% efficiency which is a huge improvement from what we had previously.  We finished the day off with brainstorming ideas for a structure we could build to hold an entire tank of scintillator fluid with the paddles fixed above and below it and a PMT mounted on top of it.

21 cm Detector: Day 7 -May 28

We made some progress today and were able to take a picture outside! You can now at least tell what is seen outside. We still have to play around with the settings because it is not completely clear, but hopefully we can figure that out soon. Now our next task is to set up a feed to a website so that every time the webcam takes a picture, people can see them just by looking online.

Although we were able to get the picture outside, the raspberry pi is still not recognizing the usb camera properly. We can only get it to take a picture if we type the line fswebcam -p YUYV test.jpeg. If the camera was properly being recognized then we would not need the -p YUYV in the code. We are also trying to get the camera to stream a video and detect motion. We found a few websites that will allow us to do this hopefully with relative ease. But for a lot of these codes to work, we have to ensure the camera is recognized properly.

 We also got all the parts to finish the 21 cm detector so that we can test it at Union on Monday to see if it works! This is a picture to show all the parts put together.

Muon Detector Pictures

Pictures from Day 7
A day in the Chem lab

Muon Detector Pictures

From Thursday Day 4

The inside of the photomultiplier tube. 

A pmt with an air leak. 

The other end of the pmt. 

Inside of a pmt. 

Inside of a pmt. 

Inside of a pmt. 

Muon Detector: Day 6 (yesterday)

Day 6:
Today we started off by testing how many muons we detected when the paddles were held at different angles.  This is where we left off last time so we went up by smaller increments this time.  Our results were valid with what we saw before because as the paddles were more horizontal, less muons were detected, showing that their path is vertical.  Next, we began to test the scintillator fluid that was used back when Daniel Many started this project.  His results showed that this fluid was not very efficient.  We tested the fluid using different voltages for the middle paddle attached to the jar of fluid.  For the few measurements we did, it seemed that the efficiency increased until it came to a plateau when increasing the voltage of the middle paddle.  Lastly, we left the apparatus set up with voltage running to test the efficiency over night.

Weather Station: Day 6- May 27

Today we got the raspberry pi to read the voltage the arduino sent. We then programmed the arduino to convert the voltage into a temperature. We learned how to read and save data using python . This is so we can look back at data from months ago which is our ultimate goal with the weather stations. Also, we have others sensors besides this temperature one that we still have to test.

This is the circuit with a temperature sensor. We have the arduino (right) connected to the bread board (left). 

Earlier in our research we found a link that would help us connect the La Crosse Weather Pro to the arduino using a RFM12B transceiver. This is that link again: http://nikseresht.com/blog/?p=99
On this link we found a picture of the circuit that we needed to make. The wires that are free right now have to be connected to the RFM by soldering them together. The little green square to the left is the RFM transceiver.

Lastly, today we tried to get the new Vantage Pro2 weather station connected to a different Windows computer. This time we tried a Windows 7 but the same problems occurred. We might need a different computer to download the software for this weather station.

21 cm Detector Day 6

We are currently waiting for the last few pieces to complete the detector. In the afternoon, we began to work on the webcam to watch the viper telescope. We were trying to fix the brightness on the camera. When we first plugged in the camera, the brightness was proper for anything inside of the room. We then tried to move the camera closer to the window and got a white screen. We tried plugging in the camera to a Windows computer and the program would allow us to change the setting of brightness, contrast, tint, ect. When we brought the camera back, we were able to get the following image when positioning the camera to outside the window.

This is the image that we were able to take outside the window. The different color is the grass. 

We tried to readjust the brightness some more but kept running into the same problem. The camera has an auto-adjust feature for brightness and seems to have difficultly going back to normal brightness.

This is a picture from the camera point outside. The white glare is outside.

This is a picture of the room after trying to take a picture outside.

Tomorrow we are going to try and find a way to take the picture outside. We think that the reflection from the glass may be causing problems with the built in auto-adjust feature. We also need to find out why we can no longer adjust the code we have to auto take the picture. We also hope to have the last few pieces for the detector so we hope that we can complete it.

21 cm Detector Day 5

Happy Friday!!

We started today working on de-soldering the copper tape flap and de-solder the stub from the cakepan.

We then had to cut the coil to the proper length and strip the wire so that we could solder the wire to itself. Above is the stub properly soldered to the detector. Until lunch we continued to research the function of the 21 cm detector.

Since we are still waiting for parts to finish the detector we began to work on programing a video camera to watch the telescope to make sure no one damages it. We were able to find a code that takes a photo on a given interval of time.  Below is a line of code that captures a single image.

Next week we hope to program this to connect to arduino to take pictures when there is motion around the telescope. Also, we want to hook up the camera to post pictures to a website so that anyone can access these pictures.

Weather Station: Day 5 - May 23

Today we put the new weather station together. It is more complex than the first weather station so it took some time.

We also did some research about the I2C which we found to be the inter-integrated circuit. It is pinless which makes it easy to add or remove components. Also, the arduino boards can control all of the components that use the I2C.

We tried to continue the circuit from yesterday but we ran into difficulties when running the code. We kept getting an error message so we are going to look into that some more.

We also installed the software that connects the weather station to a PC specifically windows. However, we are only receiving data for the temperature and humidity so we have to go back and see where we went wrong. All of the information is showing up on the console but not on the PC. It is possible that we have to wait for the information to process and it is also possible that we made an error when setting up the software.

ASC: Website Designing

Today we have been working on the website where the images from the all sky cam are going to go. We have links to different parts of the site and some basic details in there. We also have the general structure of what the website will look like done. We only have a really rough version so there is room for editing and improvement. Hopefully Tuesday we can go back on the roof with the camera (and computer) and look for an exact place to put the camera. Also, we still need to make the mount that it will rest on. Have a GREAT Memorials Day everyone!!!

Muon Detector: Day5

Today we finished up testing the efficiency of Paddle A by varying it's voltage while keeping Paddle B's voltage fixed.  Our results showed us that 1800 volts is the ideal voltage for both paddles.  Next, we  kept the paddles at a fixed voltage of 1800 volts and at a distance of 14 inches from each other.  We then varied the angle of the paddles with zero degrees being completely vertical and 90 degrees being completely horizontal.  Our results showed that the rate of photons counted was highest at zero degrees and close to 0 at 90 degrees.  This shows us that the path of a muon is vertical, they do not tend to come in at angles.  Since we still got a count for 90 degrees, we are going to test our paddles for light leaks again next time we meet.

ASC: FINALLY WORKING!

With the help of Dr. Cummings we finally got the camera working on our current PC again. Hopefully now we can test good places on the roof to put the camera. Also, we have a very, very rough draft of what the website will look like and got it started but there will need to be much more work on it. Kenny and I will need to learn a little more html and css but hopefully the basic website will be done soon.

21 cm Detector Day 4

Today we did what we thought to be the final touch ups on the detector. Dr. Cummings however helped us to see that we need to fix the cable that acts as the 1/4 wavelength stub. We now have to desolder the cable from the cake pan to do this. Figure 1 shows the part of the detector that needs to be desoldered. Figure 2 shows how the wire should be cut. Figure 3 shows what the stub should look like. Dr. Hassel also found something that needs to be fixed. We soldered one end of the copper tape to the cake pan that should not be soldered down. The part that needs to be fixed is shown in figure 4. The rest of the day was spent trying to better understand what radio astronomy studies and what purpose our detector serves.

Figure 1: This is the cable that has to be fixed then re-soldered properly.

Figure 2: This is how the cable should have looked when we attached it.

Figure 3: This is the way that we have to solder the cable. The inside wire has to connect to the outside of the wire on one end. The other end needs to be connected like the right side of the image shows. Drawing courtesy of Dr. Hassel

Figure 4: This is the part that was soldered down that should not have been. We must desolder that tomorrow.

Muon Detector: Day 3 and Day 4

Day 3:

Today we were able to get our paddles correctly hooked up to find the coincidence of the paddles.  A coincidence happens when both paddles receive a hit at the same time.  We hooked up Paddle A to a fixed voltage and our Paddle B was hooked to a voltage that we increased by 100 V every two minutes.  Using the Visual Scalar, we were able to count the number of hits going through Paddle B to Paddle A.  To find the rate, we divided our number of hits by two and got the number of counts per minute.

Day 4:

We started today by doing a second trial of what we accomplished yesterday.  Then using MatLab, we plotted the average of both trials and were able to find the optimal level of voltage to use for Paddle B.  This voltage ended up being 1,800 V.  We then repeated the process we began yesterday giving Paddle B a fixed voltage and Paddle A an increasing voltage.  Dr. Cummings also showed us what the inside of a Photomultiplier tube (PMT) looks like.  The PMT is collecting the signal on our paddles.

Weather Station: Day 4- May 22

We started our day by downloading the arduino software from arduino.cc using the Macs. We first downloaded the arduino environment and then connected the arduino to the Mac with a USB cord. We opened the arduino Application and tested the connection with the blink example. Once we uploaded the program the light on the arduino blinked every two seconds and we were successful.

Then Mike taught us about the arduino and circuits. We made a circuit with a photocell, a resistor, bread board, and the arduino. He showed us how the information was read on his computer with the arduino software. We could see the changes in the results when the amount of light hitting the photocell changed.

Next, we plugged the arduino into the raspberry pi with a USB cord. Then we had to figure out how to get them to communicate. We found a MagPi issue (issue 7) which explained how to do this in the link: http://www.themagpi.com/issue/issue-7/article/raspberry-pi-arduino/ 
We first had to install the Arduino IDE and Firmata which is the library for communicating with software on the host computer (in this case it is the raspberry pi). Then we had to install pyFirmata which allows Firmata to talk to Python and able to talk to the raspberry pi.

We also found a helpful link that had code that told the arduino to talk to the raspberry pi. Every two seconds, the arduino sent "Hello Pi" to the raspberry pi! We finally got them to communicate which has been one of our difficult goals. This is the link we used for that: http://blog.oscarliang.net/connect-raspberry-pi-and-arduino-usb-cable/

Now that we know how to build a circuit, and get the raspberry pi and arduino to communicate, we are now trying to read the temperature from an LM34. The data sheet for this LM34 temperature sensor is: https://www.jameco.com/Jameco/Products/ProdDS/155192.pdf The arduino sends the temperature to the raspberry pi in Volts. Then we will have to convert it to degrees. We set up the circuit but the code is giving us difficulty for now. Below shows the circuit that we are trying to make to read temperature.

On the bright side, the new Weather Station has now arrived!!

21 cm Detector: Day 4- May 22

Today we made some finishing touches on our low noise amplifier assembly. Then we spent the day learning some background information on radio astronomy and radio waves. Radio astronomers study regions in space that cannot be seen in visible light. It is the study of objects in space that give off radio waves. We are able to find the location, density, and motion of hydrogen gas in the universe because of radio waves. We hope to start work on the signal amplifier next to connect it to the low noise amplifier so that we can test it.

21 cm Detector Day 3- May 21

21 cm Detector Day 3- May 21

Today we started off by drilling a few more holes into our cake pan and mounting sheet so that our antenna would match up correctly with the low noise amplifier. Below is a picture of some of the parts that are being used to build the 21 cm detector.

This shows the cake pan, which the low noise amplifier will go on the outside of, the antenna, which is a Styrofoam tube with copper tape wrapped around it, and the yellow square is pc board that will act as an insulator. The Styrofoam tube with copper tape will go on top of the yellow pc board inside of the cake pan.

Next we needed to solder one piece of the copper tape to the SMA connector and another piece to the cake pan. Then we soldered a small cable to the SMA connector and inside of the cake pan as well.

This is currently what the stand looks like. We still need to finish securing the mounting for the antenna. We also have to fix some of the soldering inside the cake pan. We then need to find a way to test the antenna to see if it works. If it does not work, we will need troubleshoot. We also want to find a way to clarify the directions to build the antenna. We will also try to better understand what a 21 cm detector actually does.

Weather Station: Day 3- May 21

Today we found a website that explains a project exactly like ours. Here is the link for it:

http://nikseresht.com/blog/?p=99

We are going to try to replicate it but we first have to order some parts. Our weather station will hopefully send a signal to a RFM12B (transceiver) which will be connected to an arduino. We now need to do research on how an arduino and raspberry pi communicate. We hope that this allow the raspberry pi to receive the data from the weather station.

Muon Detector: Day 2

Today was a bit of a slow day.  We started off by completing our chemical safety training.  We had to do this because in our future research we will be dealing with hazardous chemicals.  We learned how the fume hoods work and also how to use the eyewash and shower.  We also were all given some pretty sweet safety goggles.  We successfully detected photons using a discriminator and viewing the pulse on the oscilloscope.

Weather Station: Day 2- May 20

Today we focused on the weather station that we have. We took a trip to the roof to figure out where we could place the weather station so that nothing else on the roof would interfere with taking data. We will most likely place the weather station at the highest point near the location of the all-sky camera. We took apart the base of the weather station to check for something that measures the signal. The picture below shows what we found inside which unfortunately gave us no information. Then for fun, we cut a wire that was the same length as the antenna located on the back of the part shown in the picture below. This was then connected to the oscilloscope which read signals from the wind and rain sensors. The waves that were produced were not helpful because the chances of decoding the signal was nearly impossible. We are now looking for other ways to connect the weather station to the raspberry pi.

Add caption

Weather Station: Day 1- May 19

First we set up the weather station. The rain gauge (on the left) and the
wind sensors (top right) are wired to the thermo-hygro sensor (on
the bottom). This sensor then sends signals to the base which shows
the data on the screen. Our goal is to read this signal with the
raspberry pi. It is difficult because the sensor is completely
wireless, there is no USB. We put this project on hold and thought
ahead to the other weather station that is coming in soon. This
weather station has a USB port which makes it easier to connect to the
raspberry pi. We followed the code that we found on the DragonTail
website to connect the raspberry pi to the new weather station but we
cannot test this software until the weather station has arrived.

ASC (All Sky Cam): Day 3 Struggles

We have been having difficulties with the all sky cam. It seems to work fine on other Windows machines, however, when we plug in the camera to the laptop we were planning to put on the roof, it doesn't connect properly. We need to see if we can run the software and camera on other computers to see whether the problem is just with the laptop we're using or if there is something else. We also had a python class today where we learned some basics about the numpy and pylab libraries. Also, both Kenny and I have started learning some HTML to eventually build a website where the images from the camera can be sent to. Hopefully, we will find out what's wrong with the camera/computer and get it fixed by today.

21 cm Detector: Day 2- May 20

Today we began to work on the antenna.




After talking with Joe, we adjusted the low noise amplifier, as shown above, allowing more room inside of it.

After checking the low noise amplifier, we had to find where the hole needed to be in the antenna. We later found that we still need to drill more holes in order to properly mount the low noise amplifier. The digram of where the holes should be was confusing in nature, thus we did not drill the proper holes. Below is us drilling the mounting sheet.

Tomorrow we will work on drilling the proper holes in the antenna(cake pan). We also have to cut the board that will help to insulate the antenna and do more soldering that has to attach the Styrofoam to the pan.

21cm Detector Day 1- May 19

Today we built the low noise amplifier for the 21cm detector. We had to drill two holes in the waterproof case shown below so that we can connect the low noise amplifier to the antenna.

We used a 1/4" drill-bit with the drill machine to make holes. 

We also had to solder the wires to the input voltages.

This shows the inside of the waterproof box after soldering.

Based on the diagram and instructions given, we built the low noise amplifier.

This is the low noise amplifier closed.