cloud detector PR proposal

[geeksville]

Hi Aaron,

Thank you for your reply on cloudynights. I think I'm going to write this feature.

• Would you like me to send you a PR?
• Would you be willing to review my current plan (it is short) to increase odds the final code is useful for others?
• I think my first PR to you would be approximately "stage 2" here.

Have a nice week
-Kevin

[aaronwmorris]

I read through this. I do not think I would label what you are proposing as a "cloud detector" but rather just a sky condition detector. You are basically wanting to create some sort of objective metric for rating the sky, but just looking at the star count or SQM does not actually measure "cloudiness".

I would avoid the jSQM metric entirely. This was a very early metric that I implemented. jSQM literally means "janky SQM" :-)

There is a now real SQM metric that can be enabled in indi-allsky if you want a good measure of sky brightness: https://github.com/aaronwmorris/indi-allsky/wiki/SQM-Sky-Brightness-Measurement

The star count is a really good metric for sky conditions, especially for astrophotography.

[geeksville]

@aaronwmorris good point! I'll change the name to something more like sky_condition. If it works would you want a PR once I do stage 2?

[ikeysolomon]

Fyi I have created something similar using the sky temps obtained from the MLX family of sensors in PR #3109