Stargazing Through Sleepless Nights

There’s something poetic about watching the stars while cradling a newborn. During my paternity leave, while my days were filled with the beautiful chaos of first-time parenthood, my nights became an unexpected intersection of two kinds of wonder: my newborn child and the vast cosmic dance above. Ever since I was a kid, I’ve been fascinated by the night sky. I’ve always loved the idea of capturing the stars in a way that’s both beautiful and functional and my mother is the primary stoker of this fire.

Between diaper changes and 5am feedings, I found myself drawn to a project that had been sitting in my mental queue for months - building an automated stargazing camera using a Raspberry Pi. The AllSky camera project seemed like the perfect way to keep my technical mind engaged while being fully present for these precious early moments of fatherhood.

The Build Journey

Like many first-time builds, mine was a story of trial and error. The PVC case seemed like a brilliant choice on paper - affordable,weather-resistant, and easy to work with (I already own a heat gun to help build my highland games throwing hammers). In practice, it became a lesson in humidity management and thermal considerations. The clear dome, which I’d selected somewhat haphazardly, taught me about the subtle interplay between material quality and image clarity not to mention the importance of a good seal.

The lens saga was particularly memorable. The first one was simply wrong - a harsh but educational mistake about carefully reading and re-reading the specs of hardware that’s new to me. The second lens was a correct fit and even easy to focus but came with a scratched surface, leading to some noticable artifacts in the night sky captures. Each setback was a puzzle to solve during those quiet moments when the baby finally drifted off to sleep but I was not yet ready to rest alongside him.

Small Victories and Starry Nights

When it finally worked, there was something magical about cataloging the stars that watched over our home each night. For a few months, while I was learning the rhythms of fatherhood, my little Pi companion was faithfully waiting to be tinkered with, and configured, and finally began documenting the celestial patterns above us. It felt like creating a stellar diary of my child’s first months on Earth; and as you can tell I was, am, emotional about that time and how I got to spend it.

The Next Iteration

Currently, the disassembled pieces of my first attempt sit on my desk - a reminder of both what worked and what could be better.

The camera may be temporarily offline, but the lessons remain: about patience, about learning through failure, and about finding ways to merge our technical passions with life’s most important moments. As I plan the rebuild, I’m carrying forward not just the technical lessons, but also the reminder that some of our best projects are born in those precious, sleep-deprived moments of personal transformation.

This is the first in what I hope will be a series of posts about building things, breaking things, and learning along the way - both in technology and in life.