This month’s #brightideas comes from Aubrey, located in Texas who is an avid astronomer and an Insteon user since 2010. Aubrey is a member of the Central Texas Astronomical Society (CTAS) who owns a remote site with 24” inch telescope in a 24 ft. dome. Insteon was used to turn on devices up in the dome itself as well as some items like a chiller for the camera.
In 2016, Aubrey built a roll-off roof observatory at the same location. It was to be completely remote with no one there to monitor the observatory equipment. He needed to turn on the telescopes, cameras, monitoring cameras, and telescope mounts along with a garage door opener to roll off the roof. He controlled all of this with an Insteon Hub and his cell phone. The Low Voltage Controller would open and close the garage door with momentary switch action. Aubrey used the regular wall On/Off Switches for higher power requirements and Wall Outlets for lower power. Finally, he used a Dimmer Module to set the amount of light to shoot calibration images called “Flats”.
Below are images of the Brickhouse and Meyer Observatories:
Thanks, Aubrey, for sharing your Bright Idea and we look forward to more submissions!
About Aubrey
Aubrey Brickhouse has been an amateur astronomer since 1997 when he bought his first telescope (an 8” Meade SCT).
After retirement from Texas Instruments, he became a member of the Central Texas Astronomical Society (CTAS) which spans the territory of Hillsboro, Waco, Temple and Killeen. He currently is the President of the club which has around 150 members.
Aubrey has focused most of his astronomy since 2009 on Astrophotography.
He currently uses a Celestron C-11, an Astro-tech 106 Refractor mounted on a Losmandy G11 mount. His latest camera is the SBIG STT-8300M.
He also has many images from a 24” Richey-Cretien telescope at the club’s Meyer Observatory outside Clifton, TX. You may see some of his pictures (see “Photos” on the web site) and learn about CTAS at: http://www.centexastronomy.com
Learn more links:
Have a Bright Idea you would like to share? You can tag us with @insteon and use the hashtag #brightideas on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram. Or, if you prefer to share with us directly, email your story with pictures and/or short video to ideas@insteon.com.