Project Blog
3D Printer Has Arrived!
Posted on October 4, 2024 by Carobin
Yesterday a new 3D printer arrived from in the mail! I decided to purchase the "Bambu Labs X1C" to help with the prototyping phase of the project, as well as possibly being a critical part to manufacturing the various parts of the system within the Nodes once the manufacturing phase begins. This printer wasn't cheap, at $1,600 plus accessories and filaments, it was a necessity.
While I have experience building 3D printers from various manufacturers, this is possibly the first printer, a "Prosumer" model that isnt a project in of itself and instead is an actual tool that can be used in a variety of projects, without hindering the project itself. This printer is also more capable than the pervious printers I have built as it's esspecially good at printing composit filaments/materials, which will be critical when choosing materials for diffent parts of the system/node. For example, you'll want a higher tensile strength material for the gears and mounts but for the shell/housing of the Node, you'll want to use a material that is UV and weather resistant. Plans are to have the printer set up so I can start printing out some mounts for the Pi cameras and assosiated Pi computers by the weekend as I need to clear the work space for a new desk I just put together that will be the printers new home.
Currently, I'm only going to be printing in matte PLA and I'm also going to be printing out various add-ons for the X1C to make it a little bit easier to operate as well as adding a backup camera for monitoring the prints just in case the built in one fails or cant be connected to. The choice to start with PLA instead of going straight to a carbon composite option is because I still need to tune the printer and get a couple more things like filament dehydrators before getting the filament itself, especially considering I'm in humid South Florida! PLA is also a good choice for printing the test mounts to compare the various Pi camera sensor modules and lenses, as those wont be outside for any longer than 60-90min per test and in ideal conditions. I'm likely to build 2 camera test mounts, each holding 2 Pi camera modules. One will be using 2 Pi Zero W v1.1's and the other will use a single Pi 5 as it has 2 camera cable connections.
I'll be sure to update the next blog post with pictures of the printer and the new upgraded build area!
I'm pretty sure this specific camera, the "Arducam 8.3MP Sony STARVIS 2 IMX585 Ultra Low Light Camera" is going to be the ideal choice due to its price to performance ratio when compared to other astrophotography cameras on the market, coming in at $250 compared to $2,500+. A few of those with the proper lenses could cover enough of the sky and make it pretty straight forward to setup, although a little more expensive than I would have liked it to be... Shocking! Because right now I'm thinking about having 3 cameras each with 120º FOV lenses that are always on and watching for objects in the sky, 1 camera with a 2-5x lens and 1 last one with as high zoom a lens as I can afford. It's also important to remember to get lenses that are IR compatible! A 6th camera may be added specifically for using analog Image Intesifier Tubes (IIT's) or Night Vision, since I have a very nice PVS-14 with an unfilmed L3 tube begging to be used in this project..
Understanding The Electromagnetic Spectrum (Reality)
Posted on September 22, 2024 by Carobin
This post is mostly going to show the EM spectrum and where our visual capabilites lies within it and the parts we need to be able to see into for this project. I've pulled many different illustrations and charts of the EM Spectrum from Google Images that I believe best convey this idea. I find this important to understand, if even at a basic level, just how big reality is and how little of it we see.
The image below shows the full electromagnetic spectrum, allowing you to explore the EM Spectrum in detail. While looking through the chart, you will notice the visible part of the spectrum (The colors we see) is such a small part of the larger EM Spectrum. We have only recently in the last few decades, been able to to start to peer into the other parts of the spectrum thanks to advanced technologies. Technologies which I aim to implement that will expand our collective Umwelt. Now as you can see, we don't know what we don't know. And this chart shows us where all the known-unknowns will reside (like UAP's).
Now, let's focus in on the parts of the spectrum that we know UAP have a signature of some kind that can be observed (In the IR parts of the spectrum). The charts below will focus in on what we need the sensors to cover and where they are in relation to visible light.
My next blog post will be about how we use the knowledge from this post and my previous one that highlighted the "Eye On The Sky" study to try and narrow in on which camera sensors I need and will be experimenting with to figure out which ones will work best for the needs of the project. I'll show pictures and specs of what I have currently to test with and what I think I need to purchase next for better low light performance and IR capture.
The Birth of A Project!
Posted on September 20, 2024 by Carobin
I find myself now needing to prove this happened. Not for anyone, but for everyone. And the military is clearly aware of them at some level. I mean they are chasing them around the Bradenton-Sarasota area with Blackhawk helicopters and C-130's as reported from locals (not just myself). Videos of these have been posted although they are of poor quality to try and determine exactly what they are chasing.
Most people who are recording these things are doing so with their phones when they happen to see one overhead. This leads to poor data for using in any scientific methods. What is needed is some kind of standardized platform for gathering the data on these crafts in a reliable and consistent way, so that it is available for research to anyone who wants to use it. Beyond UAP's, I suspect this platform will be useful in other areas for other projects as well.
One of the other sources of what is going on in regards to these objects are from government insiders that for one reason or another decide to come forward and try to disclose what's going on. These people for the most part seem to be trying to do the right thing and get disclosure out, but I feel like they have been playing "whack-a-mole" with their investigating methods. They show up to a spot for a couple of days to a couple of weeks and put up very basic cameras with low resolution or optical zoom, which makes it impossible to tell what you're actually looking at. A better more consistent approach is needed...
Eye On The Sky, The best scientific study on UAP was just recently published on August 27th, 2024 and they disclosed precisely where in the EM spectrum the UAP had recordable and repeatable signatures. This incredible study on the Phenomena has just provided a solid foundation for us to focus on, allowing us to streamline our approach and reduce costs in such a significant way, that it will help in scaling the number of Nodes on the network tenfold. This will allow us to cover more of the sky, first in known hot-spots and then more broadly over an entire state or country. The idea would be to eventually provide coverage similar in concept to how the ADSB flight tracking networks are able to cover the planet, but with way, way, way more data...
My UAP Experience and My Motivation to Explore It in Depth
Posted on September 11, 2024 by Carobin
This is the event that has me reassessing what I believe to be actually real. Before this, I was always into Science Fiction, but it was always just that, Science Fiction. Sure I believed some things would eventually play out to be true in the future as technologies advanced. But the entire idea that aliens or other intelligent life forms were actively visiting us and that the U.S. government knew in some capacity, was unproven and considered by me to be a whacky conspiracy theory with no real evidence to back it up. Or at the very least the evidence was so shitty that nothing could really be drawn from it with any degree of certainty. So essentially I was highly skeptical on the whole issue and only gave it a 1-3% chance of being real.
It was between 2am and 3am one morning in late March or early April in 2023. I was up late playing video games as I usually do when I can't sleep. I was playing Stellaris on my Steam Deck and propped up against the wall with pillows and I was facing the North wall in my bedroom. I started to hear what sounded like a rather loud electric golf cart driving down the street from the North. I remember thinking "Which drunk neighbor is out driving their golf cart at 2am!?", and as soon as that thought was finished it sounded like it wasn't on the street but now sounded as if it was in the air heading my way.
Right as I noticed it was flying a second sound was now noticeable and it was a somewhat deep, resonating tone that seemed to resonate audibly at 1hz. At this point I'm no longer thinking and am simply in a pure state of observation, knowing full well that this was something incredibly unique that was flying overhead. As it got closer the resonating sound became louder, right up until it was directly over the house, at which point I heard a third distinct sound coming from it. It sounded deep, consistent, non-resonating and a metallic sounding hum. It passed over the house without stopping and at a speed of around 30mph and a height of around 100-200ft. Once it had passed the sounds other than the resonating one were gone quickly. The resonating sound continued to linger, but faded as the craft got farther and farther away, until I couldn't hear anything from the craft any longer. I remember my head and eyes locking onto the craft, even though I couldn't see it because of the walls and ceiling, as it went over. The craft was coming from 10ºN and heading 190ºS.
After about 5 seconds of just sitting there not thinking about anything and in some kind of shock, I tried forcing myself back into the game I was playing, fumbling with the buttons, not really doing anything. About 20 seconds later, I hear the sound of helicopter rotors coming from the North. First one, then two as they came from the direction the UAP came from. They were going probably twice as fast too, like they were trying to catch up to it and took the exact flight path as the original craft. This is when I finally just said "What The Fuck!" I dropped my Steam Deck onto my lap and just put my hands up and covered my head in shock as to what I just heard. Now my mind was going crazy. I couldn't stop thinking about all the possible things it could've been based off of what I heard and how I heard it play out. As you can imagine, I did not sleep that night.