ASI-16 Basic All Sky Imager

The ASI-16/51 All Sky Imager is an automatic full sky camera system with All-sky fisheye lens with anti-reflective coated quartz dome for a 180° field of view. It provides high-resolution images of the sky and clouds, both as pre-scheduled network stored JPGs and as a video livestream. The ASI-16 can take clear full hemispheric pictures of the sky durig daylight, even under full sunlight conditions. It can serve as a powerful cloud coverage detector. 

The 5MP camera developed by Schreder CMS is provided by EKO world-wide. The standard camera features an integrated ventilator and heater system to operate under most severe weather circumstances. The ASI-16/51 has a dedicated sensor interface to connect a temperature / humidity sensor and optional pyranometer.

The camera is connected to a data server, which can be a local hard drice, NAS, FTP or Cloud server. The standard ASI-16 control software is based on a Web-browser user-interface. The camera settings, acquisition of images and updates of the camera software can be made through the secured CMS server. In case of any network communication interuption data can be stored to the 2GB internal storage. 

With the optional new Trinity software different aspect of the clouds can be aquired. As a standard function of Trinity, cloud coverage and cloud classification can be analyzed for photovoltaic evaluation applications. Cloud base height can be measured with two ASI-16 cameras and the optional Cloud Base Height (CBH) software. The CBH software allows for the evaluation of cloud height in real time. A stereoscopic method is applied to process time synchronized images of two sky imagers and the local data (latitude, longitude, and elevation).

With the optional cloud motion function the speed of clouds and direction can be detemined. This function is the first step for cloud forecasting research. Another would be to integrate the pyranometer MS-80M to measure the irradiance and store the data together with the image.