Meteor & All-Sky Cameras

The "leave a camera looking up all night, every night, and let it find the interesting things" tier — meteor detection, sky-quality monitoring, cloud watching, fireball alerts. Pi-based all-sky cameras with fisheye lenses + sensitive CMOS run for years on a few watts. Tightly tied to the Global Meteor Network (GMN), NASA Fireball Network, and pro-am collaborations like CMOR.

For the underlying SBC see Pi Models and Classic Pi Projects; for cloud / weather forecasting see Astro Cloud & Weather; for meteor radio detection see SDR Receivers; for citizen-science programs to plug into see Citizen Science & AstroBin.

Meteor detection software

• ★ ★ RMS (Raspberry Meteor Station) — GPL, Python; Pi 4 / Pi 5 + sensitive CMOS (IMX291 / IMX307 / IMX462) + fisheye. The Global Meteor Network's reference station. Detects meteors in real time, computes orbital elements when paired with a sister station ≥80 km away (triangulation), uploads results to the GMN database. Runs unattended for years. Croatian Meteor Network is the upstream community.
  • https://github.com/CroatianMeteorNetwork/RMS
• ★ GMN (Global Meteor Network) — the federated network of RMS stations; ~1500+ stations as of 2024–26. Joining is free; you submit your station and your detections contribute to the world's largest meteoroid orbital database. Strong pro-am success story.
  • https://globalmeteornetwork.org
• UFOcapture HD2 (SonotaCo, Japan) — paid Win-only (~$300). Long the meteor-camera standard before RMS; closed-source; still used in Japan.
• MetTracker / MeteorTracker — niche freeware Win meteor detector.
• Sentinel (NASA AMS) — free Win software for the NASA fireball network.

All-sky camera (general)

• ★ ★ AllSky Software (Thomas Jacquin) — GPL, Pi-based; the de-facto OSS all-sky camera. Captures wide-angle frames every minute, generates star-trail timelapse, real-time keogram, day/night mode, web gallery, MQTT integration with Home Assistant, optional plate-solving overlay, integration with Stellarium for object naming. Pi 4 + ZWO ASI120MM Mini + 1.55 mm fisheye is the canonical recipe; total ~$350.
  • https://github.com/thomasjacquin/allsky
• AllSkyEye — Win-only commercial all-sky software; closed; less popular than AllSky.
• TheSkyX All-Sky Camera — paid; bundled with TheSkyX. Niche.

Hardware combos

• ★ Pi 4 / Pi 5 + ZWO ASI120MM Mini / ASI178MM Cooled + 1.55 mm or 2.5 mm fisheye + acrylic dome — the canonical AllSky / RMS rig; ~$350–500. Cooled cameras help with hot-pixel rejection on summer nights.
• Sensitive CMOS — IMX291 (Sony, low-light, color), IMX307 (mono variant), IMX462 (low-light color), IMX585 (newer, lowest noise).
• Fisheye lens — 1.55 mm f/2.0 for nearly-180° view; 2.5 mm for narrower / sharper edges.
• Acrylic / glass dome — ZWO sells one; or 3D-print a holder + bird-feeder dome.
• Heater ring — keeps the dome dew-free; 5–10 W; mandatory in humid climates.

Cloud / sky monitoring (allsky uses)

• ★ AllSky's cloud detection plug-in monitors star count vs predicted; trigger Home Assistant automations when sky goes cloudy mid-session.
• MQTT → Home Assistant — see MQTT for Home.
• Sky-quality meter (SQM) integration — pair an AllSky station with a Unihedron SQM-LU or a homebrew TSL2591 sensor.

Fireball / bright-meteor specialty

• NASA Meteoroid Environment Office — runs the Sentinel network; freely accessible data.
• AMS (American Meteor Society) — citizen-science fireball reporting.
• IMO (International Meteor Organization) — global federation; visual meteor counts and digital data uploads.

Radio meteor detection

For the other form of meteor detection — using a 6 m / VHF beacon to detect meteor ionisation trails — see SDR Receivers and SDR Software. Software like CMOR and ColorGramme handle the radio-side analysis; complementary to optical detection.

What's changing in 2024–2026

• GMN station count exploded — 2024 saw GMN cross 1500 stations; orbital determination is at unprecedented quality.
• Pi 5 RMS support — 2024 RMS releases targeted Pi 5; sub-second per-frame analysis at full sensor frame rate.
• AllSky AI cloud detection — community plug-in adds ML cloud detection.
• Smart-scope all-sky — none yet; this category is still niche-specialist.
• Larger sensors / lower noise — IMX585 / IMX676 reaching all-sky kits.

License / pricing summary

• Free / OSS: RMS, GMN, AllSky Software, all the Pi-side tooling.
• Paid: UFOcapture HD2 ($300), commercial all-sky cams ($500–1500).
• Hardware: $350–500 for a respectable Pi-based all-sky / RMS station.

Pick this if…

• Default OSS all-sky: AllSky Software on Pi 4/5.
• Default OSS meteor station: RMS, contribute to GMN.
• Both: run AllSky and RMS on separate Pis with separate cameras (or one Pi 5 with two cameras).
• Pro fireball reporting: join AMS / IMO / GMN.
• Cloud-watcher for HA automations: AllSky → MQTT → Home Assistant.
• Wallet-burning Win paid: UFOcapture HD2 (Japan-popular, niche elsewhere).