Episode 103 - Meteor Showers, meet Networking Powers!

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Welcome BAAACK to The Astrocast! This week, Roo sits down and chats about getting back to basics, watching meteor showers with friends and family, and lots of new software for managing shared/networked folders and files. 

RustDesk: https://rustdesk.com/
SyncThing: https://syncthing.net/
Home Assistant: https://www.home-assistant.io/

Affiliate links to popular Astrogear!
 ASI2600MC Pro - Cooled Astronomy Camera: https://bit.ly/4ymcjLD
ASI2600MM Pro (Mono) - https://bit.ly/3RsqQVr
ASI6200MC Pro (Full Frame OSC) - https://bit.ly/4h4iFsN
ASI6200MM Pro (Full Frame Mono) -- https://bit.ly/4yIhZ2u
AM3N Harmonic Drive Mount (w/tripod) - https://bit.ly/4ysuIX1
Seestar S30 Pro Smart Scope : https://bit.ly/4hH14Hp

Want to run a remote rig???

You can build your own version of my remote rig! The only things I don't have listed here yet are the DeepSkyDad FP2 and Dew heaters. I'm workin on that!
 GLI.Net Comet - Remote KVM : https://amzn.to/4fF9GNp
ASI2600MC Pro - Cooled Astronomy Camera: https://bit.ly/4ymcjLD
ASI120MM Mini - Guide Camera: https://bit.ly/4vwbs8b
AM3N Harmonic Drive Mount (w/tripod) - https://bit.ly/4ysuIX1
Mini PC - https://amzn.to/4gHGLcH
ZWO EAF - Focuser: https://bit.ly/4yIEf1X
ZWO CAA - Rotator/Camera Angle Adjuster: https://bit.ly/4pnFoC6
ZWO 5X2” EFW Filter Wheel (2025) - Filter Wheel: https://bit.ly/4w9Kkxa
SVBONY SV241 Pro - Power Hub: https://amzn.to/4h1lsD9
APC BE600M1 - UPS Battery Backup: https://amzn.to/4f8snci
NETGEAR GS305E - Network Switch: https://amzn.to/44v2uNE
TP-Link Tapo P316M - Smart Power Strip (HS300 successor/equivalent): https://amzn.to/4ymeJdb

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Transcript

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00;00;37;22 - 00;00;53;03
Roo
You.

00;00;53;05 - 00;01;12;15
Roo
Welcome back to the Astrocast. I'm your host, Roo. Today is Tuesday, August 25th, 2026.

00;01;12;17 - 00;01;52;14
Roo
A 94% waxing gibbous moon is upon us with a partial lunar eclipse right around the corner. Hope you've all been doing well. It's been a hectic few weeks for me. This whole summer has been just crazy. Guys, sorry I haven't been keeping up as much as I'd like to. Believe me, that is not by choice. But nonetheless, I have been keeping up with my astronomy and very much looking forward to sharing a little bit of what I've been up to with you.

00;01;52;16 - 00;02;16;20
Roo
You know, I still manually handle the theaters. I've done that ever since I started the show, and I just really enjoy doing it. I don't know why, probably because it's fun to move sliders and press buttons. Anyway, thank you so much for joining us this week. As I said, my name is Roo. If you're new here, this is the Astro cast.

00;02;16;20 - 00;02;46;06
Roo
It is a what do we call this Semimonthly show about astronomy and astrophotography and all things in between. Lately I have been trying to get back to basics, and one of the cool things that I was able to do just last week was actually meet up with a friend and go watch a meteor shower. Now, this is something that I have done since I was a kid.

00;02;46;06 - 00;03;13;14
Roo
So long time listeners of the show will know that one of the early inspirations to me on my journey of astronomy was seeing the 2001 Leonids meteor storm. That was something unlike anything I have ever seen and probably will ever see again, though I do certainly hope to see a meteor storm again someday. There's no guarantee that it will happen.

00;03;13;15 - 00;03;47;14
Roo
Obviously, the Leonids are one of the higher rated showers in terms of likelihood to have a so-called storm appear, and I believe it's every 20 or 30 years that one of these tends to happen if it happens at all. There's never a guarantee that it will. But that was incredible. And just to kind of set the picture for you, I was probably about, let me think, 2001, 9404, 2017 or 18 years old.

00;03;47;14 - 00;04;11;00
Roo
And I was in a field that was just a, I don't know, half a mile down the road from where my mom lived and where I was living at the time, and I was there with two of my good friends, Chris and Brian, and we had heard there was going to be a meteor shower that night, and we went out to this field and waited.

00;04;11;00 - 00;04;39;14
Roo
And sure enough, we started seeing shooting stars, and it kept picking up and picking up and like when we thought like, there's no way this can get any better. It just kept getting better. And when I described this to people, a lot of times they think that I'm like, maybe remembering it different than it actually occurred, but in reality, it was literally every couple of seconds you would see another one.

00;04;39;14 - 00;05;08;23
Roo
So it was just like, there's one, there's one, there's one, and that's just how it was. So I actually went online a couple of years ago, and I found some videos from the the meteor storm from 2001, and that was really cool to see that some people actually were able to capture it, because obviously this was the the early days of digital video, and I don't think too many people were out there with film, video cameras, you know, recording meteor showers.

00;05;08;23 - 00;05;49;27
Roo
But there are some videos out there. So if you ever want to kind of see what I was talking about, go look up the 2001 Leonids on YouTube and you will surely find some results. But to that end, we had the Perseus a few weeks ago and actually peaked overnight the 12th through the 13th. So I was keeping a close eye on the weather and was considering whether or not I was going to go out and actually hit up a longtime friend of the show, Justin, and asked him if he would be interested in watching the meteor shower, and he said he was absolutely down to do it.

00;05;49;29 - 00;06;11;26
Roo
So we kind of were both monitoring the weather, and it got to be about 8:00 at night. On that Wednesday night before the meteor shower. And I messaged him and I said, you know, it looks like a total toss up right now because, you know, some of the forecasts were saying it's just going to be cloudy. And then others were saying like partly cloudy to mostly clear.

00;06;12;02 - 00;06;33;02
Roo
So I said, you know, it's total toss up. I'll wake up at 3:00 and check the weather report, see what it looks like, and if there's a chance we'll go. So he was actually saying if he messaged me at three, I'll already be there. And that's a good point because it was peaking between the hours of three and five.

00;06;33;02 - 00;06;55;16
Roo
So probably want to be up a little bit earlier than that. So I ended up getting up at 230 in the morning on that Thursday morning, and I sent him a message because I checked the weather report and it was pretty much more of the same. It looked like it was a toss up. I said, you know, we can go, we might see some meteors and we might see nothing.

00;06;55;16 - 00;07;21;28
Roo
And he said, well, we're both already up, so why don't we go? So I said, you know what? You're wise, Justin, let's do this. So we were indeed both already up. So I hopped in the truck and started driving out to, you guessed it, a graveyard. This is a graveyard that I have gone to since I was literally a little boy.

00;07;21;28 - 00;07;42;19
Roo
I think my mom took me there on Halloween, when I was maybe ten years old, to scare the crap out of me because she had one of our neighbors hiding in the bushes. He jumped out and scared me and my brother. But anyway, it's about, I don't know, maybe 15 minutes from where I grew up, but out further into the country.

00;07;42;19 - 00;08;12;27
Roo
And it's a really, really cool old cemetery. In fact, it says Union Cemetery founded. 1810 on the sign out front. And if you look through some of the headstones, you can indeed find, you know, early 17th century headstones, which is just crazy old. Did I say that right? 17th century? Or would that be 19th century? 18th century? I don't know, I'm bad with that.

00;08;12;28 - 00;08;46;29
Roo
Anyway, lots of headstones from the 1800s. Some soldiers, some family of soldiers, and sadly, many infants and babies and children. But a really cool historical place. And growing up, it was pretty much the dark place that we would go to when we wanted to check out the stars, because we were able to get far enough away from the city that you could see the Milky Way and, you know, really take in all the stars.

00;08;46;29 - 00;09;13;08
Roo
And it's what we call big Sky out there, as in, you know, no horizons, no trees really blocking your views in any direction. And that's really hard to find in a place like Charlotte. You know, now that I have been out west to Utah, I know what true big Sky is like. But if you've only been on the East Coast, you might not really know too much or you might not see it too much, that is.

00;09;13;15 - 00;09;46;00
Roo
But whenever you have like a, you know, a truly 360 degree view with no trees or buildings or houses blocking your sight line, that's when you know you're in what they call big Sky. So this was about as close as we could get to big Sky as kids growing up. And I thought it was really cool that I would be able to share that place with someone relatively new in my life, just and obviously who's become a great friend and friend of the show, obviously.

00;09;46;00 - 00;10;09;03
Roo
And yeah, I had a really great time. So I got there about 3:00 in the morning. You park at the the entrance to this place, and then it's great because you got to walk all the way through the graveyard to get to the back, because that's where you set up. There's a flagpole in the back, and it's like kind of a little clearing of an area out there.

00;10;09;05 - 00;10;38;15
Roo
So that's where you want to, like set your chairs and your tripods and everything. I brought along my canon R5 and my which lens that I use are working on 14, and I believe Justin also brought a Roquan on 14. He also brought his Insta360 camera, which was really cool. It was a bit cloudy out. However, it wasn't so cloudy that we didn't see anything.

00;10;38;15 - 00;11;13;14
Roo
So I would say we probably saw between 10 and 20 shooting stars. If I had to guess. I think that would be a fairly good summary of what we saw, and it was really great. I didn't see any that were like, you know, breathtakingly beautiful or fireball meteors, but it was a lot of fun. Me and Justin talked about everything, including astronomy and personal stuff and yada yada yada, and just overall a really, really great experience.

00;11;13;14 - 00;11;41;12
Roo
And, you know, I would encourage you guys, if you haven't done so in the past, to go and watch a meteor shower with a friend or family member or a group of friends is even better. If you can actually get a group of people together to do it. It's it's not easy to convince the average non astro person to get up at 230 in the morning and go watch a meteor shower.

00;11;41;12 - 00;12;26;16
Roo
I totally get that. But if you can convince them to go out and watch a meteor shower, I can pretty much guarantee you that they will thank you later for doing it, because it's always a very special experience and in my opinion, rarely is it about, you know, how many you saw unless it's the Leonids meteor storm, but usually it's more about being able to to make that connection with somebody in a real quiet, dark place to to not look at any screens for a while, to not hear any advertisements, to just kind of disconnect for a couple of hours in.

00;12;26;18 - 00;12;54;02
Roo
This might sound corny, but like be one with nature, which is something that I really think all of us could benefit benefit from quite a bit, and really doing just that simple thing a couple of weeks ago really reminded me of why I started this hobby and this journey and this podcast. It was never about seeing if I could get the best picture.

00;12;54;05 - 00;13;24;22
Roo
You know? I know that I'm never going to produce the, you know, quality of images that I see from some of you guys that send them in, you know, it's mind blowing stuff. Whenever I first started the discord, you know, people came to me as an expert and now I'm the novice in the discord, like by far. And I'm I'm happy about that because that means that we have really, really bright people that are able to share their wisdom with us.

00;13;24;22 - 00;13;56;14
Roo
But but again, to get back to what I was saying originally, it was never about those things. For me. It was about being able to get out under the night sky and appreciate the beauty of our universe, ideally with people that I love and care about and being able to do that. It's just a it's a really good reminder to slow down a little bit and take these things in, particularly for me.

00;13;56;15 - 00;14;23;20
Roo
You know, I'm in a kind of a unique spot, you know, because I'm I'm always so busy, like, my life is a is a very busy life. I work a full time job that requires more than 40 hours a week to do properly. I'm very happily married, but that doesn't happen by itself. It requires investment of a lot of time and effort to make that relationship work.

00;14;23;21 - 00;14;48;26
Roo
I wouldn't trade that for anything. I have the show, obviously, and then the amazing community that we have built around it. I would not trade that for anything, but it's a it's a fine balancing act and sometimes I feel like I'm spinning plates on different hands, and then I turn around and look. And it's three weeks since I put an episode out and I'm, you know, panicking, saying, what am I doing?

00;14;49;02 - 00;15;07;04
Roo
Then I'm like, well, let's let's see. Last week my wife is out of town. So I had to kind of run the whole household by myself. And when she got back, I ended up getting a cold. So I had a chest cold and I couldn't record anything because I didn't have enough breath to. And then the week before that, we had to go live at works.

00;15;07;04 - 00;15;29;10
Roo
I was so busy I didn't. So my point is, is like, I'm going to get busy. There's going to be times where we go, you know, a couple of weeks without an episode. And I just want you guys to to know that it's never my intention to leave you high and dry. But there are going to be times where I have to step back to focus on my health, because I'm always doing so many things.

00;15;29;10 - 00;15;57;02
Roo
And I have come to realize as I get into my 40s that like, there are times where you just have to give yourself a little bit of grace and say, it's okay to not constantly push yourself to do more and more and more, because if you do that, you can very, very quickly burn yourself out and then you start neglecting the things that matter to you most.

00;15;57;02 - 00;16;20;18
Roo
And that's the last thing I would ever want to do with the Astro cast, because it means so much to me. So in other news, I got an update from mean over at ML Astro. A really cool one. In fact, I got tagged by a couple of friends from the show who are in the discord and I was seeing.

00;16;20;19 - 00;16;45;01
Roo
I was tagged in photos and I pull it up and look, and I'll be darned if I'm not looking at the logo for the Astro cast on a brand new Sal 33 mount. So if you don't know, ML Astro is a company ran by a guy named mean out of Vietnam, and I actually got to interview him a few months back.

00;16;45;03 - 00;17;14;20
Roo
If you haven't listened to it, go check that out. And he is making just top notch quality harmonic mounts at very reasonable prices, especially when you compare them to things like the big Red company. And I have been wanting to get a new harmonic mount, as many of you know, I think in fact, I've already talked about this on the show a couple of times, but I ended up ordering an Sal 33 to replace.

00;17;14;21 - 00;17;41;08
Roo
Well, not replace, but to, I don't know, substitute for my AM3 mount, which is now living in the very beautiful Astro Peak Observatory out in Utah. So I wanted to have, you know, a mount here that I could throw the C8 on because that's going to be the next scope that I start to conquer. To finally learn. Schmidt Cassegrain telescopes.

00;17;41;10 - 00;18;12;14
Roo
And when the batch eight for the Sal 33 was announced, he had mentioned that after this, he was going to be switching production over to the the larger seven class mount, which is called the Sal one. It was the 66 originally, but now it's the Sal one. And that if you were interested in a 33 mount, that you would want to be a member of the batch eight, because otherwise it could be quite a while before he does another one of them.

00;18;12;15 - 00;18;36;00
Roo
So obviously I jumped at the chance and I am going to be doing obviously a full review on it after I get my hands on it. I think it should be shipping out in the coming weeks. According to the the web page and the email that I got, it's not going to be too much longer. So that is something I am very, very much looking forward to.

00;18;36;02 - 00;19;02;24
Roo
Another thing that happened just yesterday, Mark reached out to me, a friend of the show, host of the first First Light gathering of the Astro cast, and he informed me that it had been one year to the day since we made the trip to Wisconsin for the first gathering of Astro CAS listeners. So big shout out to you Mark!

00;19;03;01 - 00;19;24;02
Roo
Much love to you brother! I hope you're doing really well. I wish I could have been there for the reunion at one year. I think all of us wish we could have been there for that. But unfortunately, as you know, life takes hold and we can't always do everything we want. But you'll be there next year when we have our big trip.

00;19;24;04 - 00;19;59;25
Roo
And I cannot wait to see you. And hopefully we can figure out something in between now and then. So one of the things I've been messing with more and more with my Astro Peak Observatory rig is obviously data management becomes a big thing, like we talked about on the episode where Justin showed us how to set up a remote imaging rig and basically fully automated through Nina using target scheduler and advanced sequencer.

00;19;59;27 - 00;20;29;13
Roo
And I have done that. I have definitely succeeded in the automation. So it's a combination of, you know, a few different plug ins, obviously advanced sequencer and target scheduler being the two big ones, but there's other little things that you do that are kind of in celery to the process that are just as important in my opinion, like pushover, for example, will send me messages in the middle of the night if something goes wrong.

00;20;29;15 - 00;20;48;20
Roo
It has happened a couple of times where, you know, at 4:00 in the morning, my phone starts going to be you, and I got to jump out of bed and my wife's like, what the hell is wrong with you? And sorry, my telescope might be exploding, but it's usually something small. Thankfully, I haven't had anything like disastrous happen, but it's good to know.

00;20;48;20 - 00;21;34;04
Roo
And something like pushover is extremely important to make sure that you have that data. But one thing that that I have struggled with a little bit is just moving over the files that I want us. They come in and making sure that I have access to them on the devices that I will be doing my editing on. So obviously we talked about RoboCop a little bit when we were doing the episode, and RoboCop is it stands for like robust something copying for windows.

00;21;34;10 - 00;22;10;13
Roo
But anyway, it basically is a way that you can automate copying one folder to another folder across a network connection, which is really important to be able to do. And then it will basically recursively look through the folder to make sure that it's not copying things that are already there. And it's great, and it works very well, and I believe I have it set up to, you know, after target scheduler is done for the night and my telescope has returned to the home position, yada yada, yada.

00;22;10;15 - 00;22;35;11
Roo
But there are times where like, let's say, let's say I want to grab all of the data for the blue Horsehead Nebula, and I want to put it on my living room PC because, I don't know, maybe I want to do a stack on my living room PC just to see how that data is coming along. Well, you know, in those cases, it might not be the easiest thing to do.

00;22;35;13 - 00;23;07;17
Roo
Because RoboCop is copy all those files over to my studio folder. And obviously these are, you know, large files. We're usually talking somewhere in the range of 20 to 100GB of data, depending on how long the project has been running. So I started kind of looking around at different tools that I could use to manage different situations. So I also asked the discord, you know, what do you guys use for remote connections?

00;23;07;17 - 00;23;39;27
Roo
What do you use for remote file management and all these sorts of things? And I got several different answers. Some that probably should have been obvious to me, but I just had not considered yet, for whatever reason. One of them, and I believe it was Ken who mentioned Google Drive. So he basically sets up Google Drive to sync his Nina folder on to his home computer.

00;23;39;29 - 00;24;10;11
Roo
And that way, you know, the next day when he goes to look at the data, it's all already there. And that's a really, really cool thing that I just hadn't considered knowing, because I've got one of the upgraded Google accounts where I basically get, I think it's like five. Is it? Let me go. Look, I think it's four terabytes that I have access to, which is enough to, you know, have most of my data on there as long as I'm keeping up with it.

00;24;10;13 - 00;24;35;24
Roo
So I went ahead and I synced that folder to Google Drive. And then I also made sure that that folder was sinking on that living room PC that I was speaking about earlier, where sometimes I like to just play around with my data and see how it's coming along and these sorts of things. But then I started running into another issue because it wasn't on the the My Drive folder, so I couldn't sync it.

00;24;35;26 - 00;24;54;13
Roo
It was actually on the other computers folder and Google Drive. So it it worked, but it wasn't flawless. It wasn't really just what I was envisioning in my mind. And forgive me if I can't explain it all as well as I'd like to on audio. I could probably show you on video, but this is in a video episode.

00;24;54;16 - 00;25;25;07
Roo
So I started looking at other tools just to say, you know what else is out there that's really good with these types of projects? And I found something called a sink thing, and this is a really cool application that has clearly had a lot of time and love put into it by the creators. And if you want to check it out, you can go to a sink thing.

00;25;25;09 - 00;25;51;27
Roo
Believe it. Sinking net. Let me check. Yeah, sinking net and you can download it from there. And it's a really awesome file synchronization program. So essentially first it's open source. So all the source code is available on GitHub which is great. It has an open protocol. So there's nothing hidden in the protocol about how the files are served and how they're synced and stored.

00;25;51;27 - 00;26;19;05
Roo
You can actually look through all of it yourself. It's encrypted, which is really important. It uses its own authentication method so you can, you know, pick explicitly how you would like it to authenticate. And then most importantly is it's private, meaning that none of the data is stored anywhere else except on your computer. So you don't have to worry about a central server like Apple Photos or Google Photos.

00;26;19;05 - 00;26;45;14
Roo
Google Drive, Dropbox if you're still in 2004, you know you don't have to worry about anything like that because it actually has the server on your local computer, and then you can add remote devices to it as you please. So I started playing around with this, and I started by setting up the server itself on my home studio computer.

00;26;45;16 - 00;27;27;11
Roo
So I just installed that, and after you get it installed, you're essentially brought to a web browser interface and it will tell you which folders are syncing. And you can obviously add new folders there. And then from there you can basically add a remote device. And what that would consist of would be, you know, logging into that remote device on whatever it is that you use, whether it's RDP or Chrome, Remote Desktop, etc. and then basically resetting up sync things, signing in, and then you, you know, connect the two devices using an ID code.

00;27;27;12 - 00;27;55;22
Roo
It's very, very easy to do if you're, you know, relatively tech savvy, you won't have any trouble figuring it out. And one of the the beautiful things that I have noticed is that it also recursively searches through folders. So it's not going to, you know, redownload things that are already downloaded. If it scans a folder and sees that there are certain files that have changed or certain files that are new, it will download those without downloading everything.

00;27;55;22 - 00;28;23;15
Roo
And that's really important when we're talking about astrophotography, specifically because we're dealing with these giant Fitz files that, you know, can be 50 to 200MB depending on the camera that you're using. And, you know, obviously data data is important. You don't want to waste throughput. But I've been I've been running that for a couple of weeks now and it's been really flawless.

00;28;23;15 - 00;28;46;23
Roo
So I did a couple of things. I I've got an old network attached storage device that I use. It has eight terabytes of storage set up in Raid. So, you know, if one of the drives fail, I can pull it out and pop in a new one, which is a very, very good thing to have. It's just a basic NAS.

00;28;46;24 - 00;29;14;06
Roo
It's nothing super fancy. I want to build a really nice NAS, but memory prices are just insane right now, and sadly, it doesn't look like that's going to be changing anytime soon. So, you know, I got to work with what I have. To that end, let's all just pray that we don't lose anything because, like, this is typically the time when I would be upgrading my PC.

00;29;14;08 - 00;29;33;23
Roo
It's getting to the age now where I would go out and start building a new machine. I can't even consider that right now with the the outrageous prices that we're seeing. And somebody said in the discord the other day, it's pretty crazy to hear a an astrophotographer say that prices are too outrageous right now. But I don't know.

00;29;33;24 - 00;30;04;03
Roo
That's just how it is. I can't bring myself to pay, you know, eight times as much for a SSD or Ram stick than I did three years ago, you know? So anyway, sync thing, really, really awesome storage solution for copying files between multiple devices. So for me, like one of the things that I wanted to check off the list early was backup redundancy.

00;30;04;03 - 00;30;30;02
Roo
Because, you know, I am investing all of this time, money and effort into gathering this data. I don't want to lose it all if one drive fails, which is, you know, almost bound to happen at some point. You know, drives fail. You want to make sure that you have things saved in multiple locations. Ideally you want one off site as well.

00;30;30;02 - 00;30;59;28
Roo
So if you can have it saved somewhere outside of your home, even better. For me, that's just Google Drive for now, because that's what I have. That's what I can use. But having a sink thing set up also allows me to have things saved on my studio computer, which has, you know, a lot of storage on it. I think I've got like somewhere in the range of 15 to 20TB of storage on my main studio machine.

00;31;00;02 - 00;31;21;28
Roo
And then obviously I've got the eight terabyte NAS that I told you about. I've got three terabytes on my living room computer, then I've got four terabytes on the Google Drive. So anyway, I'm copying it between all of these devices minus the living room. I don't have everything getting downloaded there just because I don't have as much space on that machine.

00;31;22;00 - 00;32;03;17
Roo
However, you know, if there's an active project that I'm working on, I might download it there. But it's good to have that that backup redundancy in place. So, you know, if, God forbid, something did happen to one of my drives, I know that all of my data is safe. And I guess all of that is to say, no matter what you use, whether it be Google Drive or Sync thing or just your own NAS, make sure that you have some type of way of backing up your data to a secondary location because you do not want to be, you know, running a remote observatory for three months and have some of the greatest data you've

00;32;03;17 - 00;32;22;04
Roo
ever collected, and then just have it all disappear in the snap of a finger because one drive fails. That's the the last thing that I would ever want to happen to myself or to any of you guys. So no matter what, you do definitely have a plan in place for how you can back up that data. I will link to sync thing in the show notes.

00;32;22;04 - 00;32;46;18
Roo
So if any of you guys want to check it out, you can. Speaking of things in the show notes, I also wanted to announce we have a partnership with a new affiliate for all of our friends over the pond. We have partnered with 365 astronomy, so that was probably the highest requested affiliate partner in the Europe region that we have had.

00;32;46;20 - 00;33;13;08
Roo
So it's man, some of these sites are crazy. The hoops that you got to jump through to get affiliate account set up. But three, six, five astronomy made it very easy. They were super easy to work with. So I will link to that in the show notes. If any of you guys ever want to make a purchase through three, six, five and use the affiliate link, you know a small portion of the proceeds will come to benefit the Astro cast to help pay the bills.

00;33;13;08 - 00;33;45;00
Roo
And I would certainly appreciate you for doing that. The other thing that I was playing with a little bit, and this is something that I always have enjoyed tinkering around with remote desktop connectivity. So I tend to use a mix of RDP. So like the built in Windows Remote Desktop connection. And then I also use Chrome Remote Desktop from time to time.

00;33;45;02 - 00;34;15;25
Roo
I also have the KVM on that machine, but sadly I think that the HDMI port may have gotten damaged on my remote computer. I haven't really had a chance to figure it out. I've had the guys swap out the cables there. And it seems like it's just not working for whatever reason. Luckily for me, I can still fully run the computer, but God forbid, you know, if I need to get into the Bios or something, that could end up being a problem.

00;34;15;25 - 00;34;37;20
Roo
So I don't know. At some point in the future I might end up having to replace that computer if I can't figure it out. But for now, it's working perfectly fine with things like Chrome, Remote Desktop and RDP. But they do, you know, leave some things to be desired. Particularly the biggest issue that I have is resolution in scaling.

00;34;37;20 - 00;35;08;17
Roo
So whenever you're using a let's call it a headless machine, which basically means a computer without a display, and that's 99% of all remote computers in an observatory setting. You're not going to have a display hooked up. There's a few different methods you can take now if you don't do anything. Typically, if you use something like Chrome Remote Desktop, you're going to get a very low resolution display output, and you're just going to have to kind of deal with it.

00;35;08;23 - 00;35;34;02
Roo
But you can also get what's called a dummy HDMI plug. I mentioned these a few months ago on the show, and it's basically like it looks like a little USB thumb drive that you plug into the HDMI port, and it basically makes the computer think that you've got like a 4K display hooked up. So that way you can go into windows and actually select the resolution that you want.

00;35;34;04 - 00;36;03;10
Roo
You can also use a remote KVM, which does something similar in giving you different resolutions and scales to choose from, but you can run into trouble at times with scaling and resolution. Like take me for example, I've got that remote KVM device that is great and it works phenomenally. But now I've got, you know, potentially a damaged HDMI port.

00;36;03;10 - 00;36;40;22
Roo
So I can't use the HDMI output. But luckily I'm still able to get the 30 by 40 by 2160 resolution, but then I can't scale it to the proper scale that I want, because it thinks that there's not a display plugged up when I go into the windows settings. To that end, if you find some tools for remote connectivity will actually allow you to manually tweak that, like the KVM software for the comet, it's.

00;36;40;25 - 00;37;13;14
Roo
Net comet, if any of you guys are curious, will actually let you manually select what resolution you want from the interface. And I was looking for a tool kind of similar in terms of ease of use to Chrome Remote Desktop, but maybe with more and better features and not Google was kind of what I was looking for. I've got a whole lot tied up in the Google ecosystem, but I don't want my observatory to be reliant on it.

00;37;13;16 - 00;37;46;27
Roo
So I started, you know, doing Google searches, and I quickly came across an application called Rust Desk. And man, oh man, where has this been all my life? So it's a very, very user friendly, open source free. Let me say that again. It's free. They do have paid versions, but they give you a very fully featured free version that you can run on your machines.

00;37;47;00 - 00;38;11;28
Roo
That really does act very similar to Chrome Remote Desktop. Or if you ever use like any desk, these types of programs very similar where you can give somebody a code to log into your computer, but you can also log in yourself, set it up, and then save that computer as a favorite so you can go and log back in at a later date.

00;38;11;28 - 00;38;36;26
Roo
So there were a few different things that really kind of drew me to rust S other than the fact that it's just free. So one of the things that I really liked about it is that obviously it's open source. So that means that anyone can download the code, look through it, see how it ticks, modify it if you choose to do so.

00;38;36;28 - 00;39;12;05
Roo
And it is self-hosted. So kind of like we were talking about earlier with sync thing, you are not reliant on something in the cloud that is ran by a company like Google. To be able to use the application, you actually can host it yourself on your own machine and you can set up endpoints. The mobile access on it is really top notch, and this is something that I still didn't have a really good solution for until I found a rest desk.

00;39;12;07 - 00;39;47;04
Roo
Basically, Chrome Remote Desktop is not something you want to attempt to use from an iPhone. I don't even in fact, I don't know. Let me open up the app store and see, but I'm pretty sure that there's not a native app for Chrome Remote desktop on iPhone. Nope, there is not. So if you download a rust desk on your iPhone or Android, it's another beautiful thing about it is that it works on pretty much any system that you can throw out at windows, Linux, Mac, Android, iPhone.

00;39;47;06 - 00;40;10;20
Roo
There are people who installed it on their vacuum. I was watching a video and somebody installed it on their vacuum. I don't know why you would, but you could. So once you have it up and running on your observatory computer, for example, you can then download it on your iPhone, the application and then enter in the details from your observatory.

00;40;10;20 - 00;40;37;25
Roo
And I guess I should back up a little bit and mention all of this that I have been talking about is assuming that you're running tail scale. So tail scale is something that I've talked about on the show many times. It's an incredible piece of networking software that gives you a self-hosted private VPN. So essentially it will. I'm trying to think of how I can put this in layman's terms.

00;40;37;28 - 00;41;04;03
Roo
It basically makes your computer that's a thousand miles away in Utah, act like it's on the same network as your, you know, home network with all of your local PCs. And that is a really important thing when you need to do things like file transfers or, you know, just connecting to the machine if you want to jump onto it and remote in tail scale enables you to do that.

00;41;04;03 - 00;41;30;28
Roo
And it's free. It's just the best piece of software that I've found in years. I love to scale. I can't speak highly enough, but assuming you have tail scale installed when you go and install rust desk on your remote observatory machine, you can then set up rust Desk on your iPhone or Android or whatever type of device that you have, and then you can actually pull the computer up the whole computer on your phone.

00;41;30;28 - 00;41;57;17
Roo
And don't get me wrong, it's not like a phenomenal UI to control a windows PC from an iPhone, but you can. So like if you're out and about and you need to check on something like, let's say you get a pushover notification that your telescope has stopped working for whatever reason, and you want to jump on and see what's actually happening or send it home.

00;41;57;20 - 00;42;19;28
Roo
This will allow you to do that. And that's something that I didn't really have a good solution for yet, other than just making sure that I'm near a computer at all times and, you know, with with life being how it is, that's not always possible. So I'm going to link to all this software in the show notes. And if you guys want to check it out, let me know what you think.

00;42;19;28 - 00;42;50;09
Roo
And like I say, I've been playing around a lot more with networking and remote connectivity and file management. And these are just things that kind of come naturally as you get more and more into remote imaging. And it's it's great for me because, like, I love tinkering with stuff like this. Like nothing makes me happier than, you know, logging into my remote PC a thousand miles away from this PC and then jumping on my studio PC while I'm in the living room.

00;42;50;09 - 00;43;29;16
Roo
And just that kind of stuff really scratches my nerd itch, if you will. So check it out. Let me know what you think. If you have any suggestions for software that you have found that has made your life a lot easier, please feel free to email it to me at ru at the Astro. Com. Also wanted to mention that I started on a another project as well, and I won't get super deep and detailed on this because it's not 100% astronomy related, but I will at least mention it to you.

00;43;29;22 - 00;43;58;01
Roo
I have started trying to get away from a lot of these major platforms that sell our data and, you know, invade on our lives and, you know, things like Amazon and Blink cameras and ring cameras and, you know, all these sorts of things. I knew better when I got into these ecosystems, but it's really just a case of ease of use.

00;43;58;03 - 00;44;26;07
Roo
It's so easy, you know, to buy a ring camera and put it on your door and then get notifications pushed to your phone when a package gets dropped off by Amazon. Right. But you don't really think that, you know, people other than you might access that data for reasons that are unknown to you. But it happens every single day all across the world, and I just don't want to be part of that.

00;44;26;09 - 00;44;55;00
Roo
When something takes place on my front porch, I don't want only my eyes to see it. So I'm starting to get away from a lot of that. And the biggest kind of dragon to slay in that realm is the smart home assistant. So specifically, I'm talking about Amazon's Alex A and time that we are referring to her. We always say Alex, so that way it doesn't trigger things.

00;44;55;02 - 00;45;30;09
Roo
I have a nightmare story about listening to a Robert Langdon book. Well, Dan Brown wrote the novel, but Robert Langdon, the character, and he kept triggering Apple's assistant. And at one point he triggered it and then said, call. And I won't say it, but the number for emergency services and it actually happened in my car. Like I was driving along listening to an audiobook, and all of a sudden it's dialing 911 on the phone, and that's that's not cool.

00;45;30;12 - 00;45;58;23
Roo
But anyway, I don't want to keep having this thing in my house, but I recognize that my family uses it. There is definitely, some huge benefits to the system. I'm not going to say that it's all bad. Like it's awesome being able to say, hey Alex, I'm going to bed and then have all the living room lights turn off and the TV turn off, and then the bedroom lights come on, you know, stuff like that.

00;45;58;23 - 00;46;20;10
Roo
I've got a really geeked out smart home and I love it. I love, love that kind of stuff because I'm a I'm a nerd. But I started tinkering around with Home Assistant a few years back and I've kind of, you know, run them in concert together. So I'll always have an Alex as the thing that I interact with.

00;46;20;10 - 00;46;38;28
Roo
But then I've got home assistant on the back end, which is the actual brains for my smart home, so I can set up groups and names and these types of things that I can talk to. Alex and then Home Assistant does it with the advent of AI. And obviously I've got a lot of feelings about AI, and not all of them are positive.

00;46;39;00 - 00;47;01;05
Roo
In fact, a lot of them are negative. I thought to myself, what can I use this for that would actually be useful to me? And I'm a big fan of the Raspberry Pi device, which coincidentally is not affordable anymore. I was talking to the discord and said at least we can still buy a Raspberry Pi. And then I believe it was.

00;47;01;05 - 00;47;32;25
Roo
John dropped a post showing that the price of those as also skyrocketed. Which is a shame because the Raspberry Pi, the whole point of it is to be an affordable single board computer. But I digress. I wanted to investigate what it would take to build my own home assistant smart device from scratch. So as it turns out, it's very, very doable.

00;47;32;25 - 00;48;06;17
Roo
In fact, Home Assistant has a great deal of what you need already baked in. So you can, for example, you could call out to a specific API for an LLM. What I just said sounds like Germany. Basically, you can use ChatGPT to be the voice or the brain of your home assistant. So like when you ask a Alex, what's the weather?

00;48;06;19 - 00;48;27;22
Roo
You know, what it does is it goes back to Amazon servers and checks and sees what the weather is in your location and then comes back. You could actually have another brain do that for you. You could have ChatGPT do it for you. Or if you wanted, you could actually roll your own LLM and then have it do that for you as well.

00;48;27;22 - 00;48;53;28
Roo
And all of these are options that are available within Home Assistant. And no matter what way you decide that you're going to go, at least you have options at that point, you're not just locked into I have to use Amazon, right? So I started by saying, what would I want if I could build my own smart home assistant, what would it be?

00;48;54;00 - 00;49;19;16
Roo
Well, I would want to be able to ask it questions about my telescopes. So I would want to be able to say, hey, Nova, what is my telescope in Utah doing right now? And then it could call out to one of Nina's many APIs and then return status functions, and then I could program it to have if this then that situation.

00;49;19;16 - 00;49;48;29
Roo
So like if it's on frame 34 of 1000 of x target then return the common name for it. So it would say, you know hey ru, you're telescope at Astro Peak is currently shooting the Heart and Soul Nebula. So there you go. That's kind of the idea behind what I want. I also would like it to have a face that would be really, really cool if I could design a little interface.

00;49;48;29 - 00;50;15;18
Roo
And the reason that that occurred to me is because I have had a seven inch Raspberry Pi display sitting around for like a year now that I haven't figured out exactly what I want to do with it. I initially bought it to make The Simpsons TV 2.0, but it's just it's too big for that. Like, I like having the really small square 4 or 3 ratio Simpsons TV.

00;50;15;21 - 00;50;40;21
Roo
That's a different project. I don't know if I've talked about that recently, but it's it's something else entirely. It's really cool. But that wasn't the right display for another Simpsons TV. So I decided that would be the perfect display to put Nova's face on. So I used a combination of anthropic and OpenAI to design the code for it.

00;50;40;21 - 00;51;16;01
Roo
And basically, you know, while my wife was away last week, I set up kind of vibe coding, as the kids say, and got like a 1.0 version of it running. So essentially I can run a local web server here, and then anything that has access to the web can display the face, and then I can set up these Esp32 satellite devices, which are essentially like tiny little computers that have a microphone built into them.

00;51;16;03 - 00;51;35;25
Roo
And you can connect a speaker to them as well. They're very inexpensive. You can get them for like $15, and then you could set one in each of the rooms where you would normally have an Amazon device. And I want to say that all of this can be run locally. So none of it has to go out to the internet at large.

00;51;35;25 - 00;52;08;09
Roo
Now, depending on what type of smart home devices you are running, some of them do require internet access, like goby in particular, is kind of notorious for needing internet access and not being able to run locally. But these are all things that you can overcome with good planning. So I ended up getting a four pack of third reality smart bulbs, because I'm thinking I'll probably go Zigbee with a lot of the lights.

00;52;08;09 - 00;52;29;02
Roo
I've got like a hodgepodge of various lights throughout the house. I've got a lot of Philips Hue bulbs, which are definitely the best ones. I've got some Gobi lamps, and then I've got some zany third party Chinese knockoff brand light bulbs as well. And those are the ones that I'm going to replace first with the third reality ones.

00;52;29;03 - 00;53;01;22
Roo
Third, reality is a company that makes stuff that works really well with Home Assistant. It's kind of the easiest way that I can put it. For example, I also have like some buttons that are made by third reality. You can program them to press the button once. And this happens in Home Assistant. I played a really funny prank on my mom once, where I hit a Google speaker in her living room and basically when her dogs were outside barking and she didn't know it, it would play like a game show host telling her to get her dogs inside with music and everything.

00;53;01;22 - 00;53;36;23
Roo
It was hilarious, but that's the kind of stuff that you can do with Home Assistant. It really opens up a whole world of opportunities, you know? Really, the sky's the limit, you know, as far as you want to take it, you can take it. And before this is one of the the good things about AI, Home Assistant was almost like this giant beast that seemed like it was, you know, almost impossible to even scratch the surface of unless you're, like, really good at YAML coding.

00;53;36;23 - 00;54;01;27
Roo
And I'm not. But if you put that in concert with a really good LLM, then it becomes much more easily to digest. So basically you would say, you know, this is what I want to do to your Claude or ChatGPT or whatever it is that you're using. And, you know, here's what I want to do it with. And then it will give you instructions.

00;54;01;27 - 00;54;25;25
Roo
And if you can follow instructions, you can build it out. So that's pretty much what I did. I spent 3 or 4 nights doing that. I got home assistant cleaned up because I had a lot of old devices that were still in Home Assistant. That shouldn't have been, I got the new devices added. I even got some moisture level detectors for my plants.

00;54;25;25 - 00;54;48;25
Roo
So I've got a Birds of Paradise plant outside that I love, but I'm never really sure when to water it. And now that I've got that moisture meter, I will always know if it goes completely dry. And then I also put another one inside in my money tree, which is like the oldest plant that we have. We got it before we got married and it's just huge now.

00;54;48;25 - 00;55;11;03
Roo
We've had this thing for over a decade, so it's really important that I keep that one nice and healthy. So got that as well. And you know, all kinds of other cool devices you can get garage door sensors and openers. I've got water sensors. So that way, you know, if I get a leak in one of the sinks, I get notified, you can connect it to your home security system.

00;55;11;05 - 00;55;41;10
Roo
It's connected to my blink cameras, which I'm going to replace with IP cameras so I can again locally store everything and not have to put it out there on the web for the whole world to see. So anyway, I tell you all this because Home Assistant is incredible software. And with the advent of things like AI, it's a lot easier for someone who may have been overwhelmed by it before to get into it.

00;55;41;10 - 00;56;15;26
Roo
Now it's just it's so much easier than it used to be. So I'll I'll continue sharing updates on Nova as I make them. I'm not going to like, publicly share the code or anything yet. I'm not comfortable doing that because it's nowhere near a polished product. But you know, if that's something that you guys are interested in, a home assistant that is more a more astro friendly, I guess you could say, let me know and if you are interested, maybe at some point I would make that that code available to everyone.

00;56;15;27 - 00;56;40;07
Roo
So I will say it's going to be nice to eventually eliminate all these giant corporate greedy entities from my house. I just, I feel like it's crazy to me that we pay for these devices when we're the product. I just wish I would have, like, realized all these things. Ten years ago, I was a beta tester for the original Amazon Echo.

00;56;40;08 - 00;57;05;01
Roo
I still have my original echo sitting up here on a shelf. It stopped working about three years ago. It just wouldn't connect to the internet anymore. But it's amazing technology. Don't get me wrong, I love the tech behind it. I just I hate the the companies and what they represent that is behind that tech. And that's a shame because I wish I could separate the two, but I just can't.

00;57;05;03 - 00;57;39;05
Roo
Also, before we wrap up, I did want to mention I got a lot of feedback on a, you know, the last episode when I was talking about Reflect Orbital, a lot of it was encouraging, some of it was not so encouraging, and then some of it was hilarious. I mean, I got all kinds of feedback from you guys, and I just want to say thank you first and foremost for writing me to, you know, take the time to send me a message about how you feel about it as well.

00;57;39;05 - 00;58;13;09
Roo
I had one conversation with a listener named Chris. He sent me, well, we're going back and forth right now. He sent me a really awesome email about his time and experience working at a, I'll just say, a astronomy company. I'm not going to drop names or anything, but we were going back and forth, and he's kind of on the same page as I in that, you know, he absolutely hates what's happening with all this stuff.

00;58;13;12 - 00;58;33;10
Roo
He thinks they'll probably fail, but he's not sure. And that's kind of where I'm at to I, you know, I look at it and I say to myself, like, financially, this just doesn't make sense at all. When you could for a lot less money, you know, just put more solar panels on the ground and use them more often.

00;58;33;10 - 00;59;00;27
Roo
But, you know, I don't know. It is very disturbing that the only governing body in the US anyway that can do anything about this is the FCC. And they've already said they're not doing anything about it. So that that really a really stinks. And finally, he mentioned that dark Sky international is an excellent, excellent organization to partner with in trying to protect our night skies.

00;59;00;27 - 00;59;32;14
Roo
And I definitely agree with him. I'm sure I've mentioned dark Sky on the show before, but as a reminder, please visit dark Sky or you can become a member there with a one time donation or join as an annual member. And they do lots of awesome outreach events. They make people aware of light pollution, and they have definitely joined in on the fight against companies like Reflect Orbital.

00;59;32;15 - 01;00;10;26
Roo
Also, I want to challenge Reflect Orbital's CEO to a debate. So if you'd ever like to come on the show and discuss with me in a very civil, adult like manner as to why you think it's okay to do what you're doing, please let me know, because I would love to have you on and just tear your but to shreds in terms of you thinking that this is okay to do, because it's definitely not.

01;00;10;29 - 01;00;36;18
Roo
But I'm not joking. If you would like to come on the show and talk about this, I would love to have you. And I would love to hear you explain why thousands and thousands of Venus's, you know, darting across our night sky one after another is going to be okay. And why do you think that you should get financial gain from ruining everyone's night skies?

01;00;36;20 - 01;01;00;06
Roo
Please explain that to me. And if the argument is, you know, we could save somebody at sea, I guess my response would be what if it's cloudy out? So feel free to come on. You can shoot me an email at ru at the Astro. Com and I will gladly send you an invite. I'll even send you the list of questions ahead of time, so I hope to hear from you.

01;01;00;12 - 01;01;22;17
Roo
Probably won't, but thank you guys so much for tuning in this week. I've got a really cool episode that I have had in the oven for a while now. It's actually a guest host episode, and I started working on the edit for it last week, and I wanted to put it out this week, but unfortunately it's just not quite ready yet.

01;01;22;17 - 01;01;44;18
Roo
But you are going to love this one, so make sure to to come back next week and check that out. I hope that you're all doing very, very good. I've certainly missed talking to you. Glad to be back and we will talk very soon. Oh, if I didn't mention it, that that lunar eclipse man, we have a partial lunar eclipse coming up on.

01;01;44;18 - 01;02;05;01
Roo
I think it's Thursday morning. I think it's the 27th. Here, let me check. It'll be Friday morning really early. So just after midnight on Thursday night, Thursday night into Friday morning we're going to get, I think like 96 to 98% coverage. So it's not going to be quite a blood moon, but it will definitely be very cool to see.

01;02;05;03 - 01;02;30;05
Roo
So definitely check that out. Take some photos if you want to share them with me, please feel free to email me at at the Astro or tag us on social media. You can tag the Astro cast or hashtag social media Stardust and I will definitely check and see what you guys have. So you have been listening to the Astro cast.

01;02;30;05 - 01;02;39;23
Roo
I'm your host, drew. Thank you so much for tuning in. Until next time. And as always, clear skies.

01;02;39;25 - 01;03;11;26
Roo
Wednesday evening the feed goes live. Roos voice cuts through the dark like a 135 from backyard scopes to mountain peaks. We're all tuned in. No time to sleep. Red dot finders koma correctors gain. He breaks it down like a simple, never pain comics rising planets in the frame. Every week we chase the sky by name. Pixels glowing hearts.

01;03;11;26 - 01;03;46;18
Roo
Line of miles. One state of mind. This is the astro cast. Where the dark brings us to the light. From Florida to the UK. Lights were wide awake under the same sky. Escorting it. Never quiet. Rose. On the night the whole world is invited. This is the astro cast. Yeah, this is the ISO can.

01;03;46;20 - 01;04;10;18
Roo
Someone in Texas just snap the horse? Had a guy in Chicago stacking flags till dawn. Belgium sharing deep sky gems while Switzerland stunning fainter bombs. Beginners asking which way is north? Old timers dropping wisdom back and forth laughs you'll get it. Just wait and see. Welcome to the family 24 seven. The channel's Never Sleep took another game showcase.

01;04;10;18 - 01;04;40;27
Roo
Blowing up the feed means a 3 a.m. coffee at noon. Someone's life streaming the rising mode where different flags, same obsession one on beating dark sky sensor. This is the astro cars where the time brings us to the light. From New Zealand to the Canadian ice. We're wide awake under the same sky. Nobody's in the photon fight rules on the mic.

01;04;40;28 - 01;05;16;29
Roo
The whole world united. This is the astro gas. Yeah, this is the Astro Castle. Here's the room. To the crew, to the glow monitors. Burning man while stars glow. Wherever you are, whatever you shoot. You never alone under that cosmic roof. Turn it up. The neighbors complain as well as they get the on the wave.

01;05;17;02 - 01;05;24;27
Roo
Sky's full hearts. She will destroy the astro cast. Never fade.