Night Sky Pi 0.1.0 Pre Release

Night Sky Pi has reached a point where a pre release makes sense. A unit has been running in the garden for a few weeks without major issues. It captures images from sunset to sunrise, exposure is acceptable, and the data is packaged at the end of the observation for later processing.

There is one clear problem to address: moisture. That is a hardware and environment issue rather than a software bug, so it will be handled separately.

Going modular

The design has shifted to a single responsibility approach inspired by the open weather dumper pattern. Night Sky Pi now focuses on one job: capture an image, attach the relevant data, and at the end of the session zip the results and keep the data directory tidy according to configuration. Pulling external data into the image JSON is supported, but sending data off device is no longer part of this service. A separate small application will watch the data directory and handle transfer to a remote system.

This direction trades a little boilerplate for simpler, more reliable components that can evolve independently.

Additional testing

The plan is to keep the unit running for weeks or months, monitor behaviour, and continue investigating the moisture problem. Code work will continue, but there are no new features before 1.0.0. Changes will be limited to bug fixes and increased test coverage. A supporting service, nsp data sender, is already underway to complete the original requirement of sending packaged observations to a remote location.

Thanks for reading. If you have a tidy pattern for small, single purpose services that pass artefacts between them, share it so others can learn from it.