Bright Idea - Stargazing

This Bright Idea 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 Plug to set the amount of light to shoot calibration images called “Flats”.