Dark Sky Logger – my extended DIY Sky Quality Meter

A few weeks back I had the DIY Sky Quality Meter demo setup working (see here). My primary target in building a Sky Quality Meter was to have a complete all-in-one ambient conditions logging device. So to finalize this project, I added a micro SD-Card reader, real-time clock, barometric pressure sensor and a rechargeable battery. I could manage to squeeze all the code into an Arduino nano :-). With the small footprint of the Arduino nano, I could build a case box (3D-printed) with only 123x68x34mm external dimensions.

One essential part of the case is a chamber for the TAOS TSL237S sensor. The status LEDs of the Arduino did alter darkness readings severely. So any light apart from the night sky has to be shielded from the sensor!
Furthermore, the sensor requires a IR-block and color correction filter, to work comparable to the Unihedron Sky Quality Meter. As described here, Unihedron uses a HOYA CM-500 filter. I could find an almost identical filter, which is now included in the case as front cover of the sensor chamber.

My Arduino code may lack some fine tuning (forgive me, but I will not publish my source code. It would not be fair to Unihedron, who had all the development to build the original SQM device!). But the sensor readings are comparable to the second fraction digit in most cases to the SQM unit I could use for testing. This is sufficiently precise to me. I do refresh all the values (darkness, sensor frequency reading, temperature, humidity, pressure, dew point, calculated altitude, battery voltage, presence of SD card as well as time and date) every 5 seconds. This is someway insane, as a refresh rate of 30 to 60 seconds would still be very high 😉

With a freshly charged 18650 battery, my device may record for more than 50 hours. So even a weekend trip would be no issue.

For all curious folks out there, this is the parts list:
– Arduino nano v3
– DS1307 RTC module
– BME280 – temperature, humidity and pressure module
– Micro-SD Card interface
– 1.3″ OLED Display (128×64 Pixel)
– 18650 Lithium battery carrier with charger and 5V output
– TAOS TSL237S sensor
– 8mm UV-IR Cut filter
– 3D printed case

And this is the device:

My DIY Sky Quality Meter – first test

A few times in the past I have seen charts of the dark sky quality for astronomical use. Especially during a visit of the University astronomy department I had the chance to talk with one of the facilities operators. This made me curious about how they quantify the night sky quality.

Upon further research I found the widely used Sky Quality Meter by Unihedron. It is a small box measuring the sky brightness by means of a light sensor with corresponding frequency output. When I could find a distributor selling these sensors for a good price, I was up to building my own one.
My concept was to use a arduino style micro controller and build a sky quality meter together with weather data (temperature, pressure, humidity) recording device. The device should save every 10-30 seconds the data collected. And it should last for at least one whole night running on a small(er) battery like AA or 18650 lithium type.

The hardware part was quite easy to accomplish. I simply had to connect a couple of wires from the micro controller to the sensors and other components. The harder part was to create a proper software, fulfilling all my needs. I had to find a way to
1) cope with the frequency range of 0.01Hz to 1MHz
2) fit all the code within the small memory
3) calculate sky quality and calibrate device to a reference device

Luckily, apart from a reasonably well described device on the Unihedron web-site, I could borrow one Sky Quality Meter from a fellow astronomy club member. So I had a reference device to compare and calibrate my device.

Here is the test setup. The readings are already very close to the original device!

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