As you may know, I enjoy a nice sunrise. You may not know that I can count on both hands the number of times I’ve gotten up, on purpose, to watch a sunrise.
When I was doing a bunch of work on a network in a previous job one of the things I would do is start work at 2-3am and finish before 5-6am so that I would disrupt as few people as I could. When I worked in my office I would notice some of the most spectacular sunrises through my spider web encrusted window. Usually this was on my way to get a few hours of sleep to start all over again.
13 months ago I started a project by getting three raspberry pi computers and 3 camera modules and programming them to take three time lapse sequences each day; one in the morning, one during the middle of the day and one as the sun goes down. Each of the computers costs about $30 and the cameras are about $25. Of course I had to buy them at a computer store and, like going to Home Depot or Costco, you can never leave these stores without spending way more money than you went there to spend. All I’m saying is the cameras are probably more costly when you factor the entire experience into them.
But I digress…
I’ve written a computer program to take these individual pictures, sew them together in a sequence and then upload them to a central location so I can view them at a more “normal” time of the day. Like not at 5am. Not even 7am. Like when I get up. Sometimes never and some times the day after. I do eventually get to watching them.
All through the year I have to modify the start times of the morning and evening time lapse to adjust for the normal fluctuations of being at 39º north attitude. It is pretty cool to watch the difference during the week on just how much later the sun will come up between now and December 22, the shortest day of the year. And even though it’s imperceptible when you are in the middle of winter the sun really does rise earlier each day which you can easily measure watching these videos over time.
Don’t ask me what I’m going to do with 13 months sunrises and sunsets. There is another project that I initially wanted to do but haven’t programmed just yet. But I do plan on doing that here soon when I can get some time. That is going to take another 12 months to complete. But it’ll be fun.
Anything worth doing is going to take some time to complete. Wax on, wax off…
13 months of sunrises is a good thing. Such optimism! Good to hear.