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| Click on image for bigger view. |
The reason that there are 540 (rather than 600)
100mS readings per minute is because I use a servo to rotate "the
receiver" through 180 degrees every 54 seconds. The other six seconds are
used to return the device to point at the North Star. In this way, a line
though the two zener diodes sweeps a path from the North Star, vertically
across the sky, to the Southern Cross and back again, every minute. As the
earth rotates on it's axis, the entire cosmos is scanned once a day.
A 100mS
average of the differences squared of the two zener rates (sampled each
mS) is plotted with 540 vertical points, corresponding to the distance from the ecliptic (Declination), and 1440
horizontal points, corresponding to the time of day (Right Ascension). The color
of each point corresponds to the amount of agreement between the rates of the
two zener diodes, with red being good agreement (lower values) and blue being
poor agreement (higher values). There should be no preferred direction that
effects the amount of agreement, so the graph is expected to be homogenous
and/or random in nature. I have finished building this thing and it is time to
give it a name. Since it views the cosmos using two point sources, I'm calling
it a Lociscope (Lō-kī-skōp).
The servo is a little shaky as it scans. I am
watching the first 24 hour image build. The image is composed of mostly light
green pixels in the mid value range with randomly scattered red, yellow and
blue pixels. In the afternoon, there were some broad and diffuse vertical bands
of lower values. I suspect these bands to be a temperature artifact, as it was
indeed warmer in the afternoon. Other than these broad vertical bands, I do not
see any grouping of colors in a particular direction or any obvious pattern to
the image. This is what I expected to see if there is no correlation between
two point sources of random waveforms and the direction in which the points
lie. I plan on making several more images in the days to come and then do some
experiments on the effect of temperature on the zener diodes.
The Effect of Temperature
I squeezed a LM35DZ temperature sensor onto the
zener "receiver" board and now I read the board's temperature in degrees
centigrade on the Arduino's analog INPUT pin A0. The sensor outputs 10.0 mV per
Cº and the Arduino converts each
millivolt to 0.2048 decimal, so Arduino
decimal = Cº * 2.048. l found good linear correlation of the average
zener peak rates to the board temperature. Zener #1 average counts per
millisecond = Cº * 3.586 + 241 and Zener #2 average counts per millisecond = Cº
* 4.639 + 492. The zeners are not very well matched so I'm not surprised that
the average difference squared to the temperature correlation is not linear. By
calculating a long term average of the difference squared data, I can
compensate for drifting temperature and those broad vertical bands on the
images become much less pronounced.
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| 6/11/2017 |
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| 6/12/2016 |
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| 6/16/2017 |
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| 6/17/2017 |
I have been collecting Lociscope images for a
week now and I have not seen any indication that the orientation of the two
point sources of random signals, effect the amount of agreement between the
waveforms. Although the images contain multiple colors, corresponding to
different amounts of agreement in the short term rates of the signals, the
pictures appear to be randomly homogenous in nature and do not contain areas of
hot spots or cold spots. The images from successive days are consistently
random and each image appears to be unique when compared to the others. I must
conclude that there are no directional components when comparing short term
rates of these two random signals. These results are consistent with the
current understanding of how the universe works. This thread is finished for
now, unless I think of a new way to approach this subject. DB
A 100mS
average of the differences squared of the two zener rates (sampled each
mS) is plotted with 540 vertical points, corresponding to the distance from the ecliptic (Declination), and 1440
horizontal points, corresponding to the time of day (Right Ascension). The color
of each point corresponds to the amount of agreement between the rates of the
two zener diodes, with red being good agreement (lower values) and blue being
poor agreement (higher values). There should be no preferred direction that
effects the amount of agreement, so the graph is expected to be homogenous
and/or random in nature. I have finished building this thing and it is time to
give it a name. Since it views the cosmos using two point sources, I'm calling
it a Lociscope (Lō-kī-skōp).
The servo is a little shaky as it scans. I am
watching the first 24 hour image build. The image is composed of mostly light
green pixels in the mid value range with randomly scattered red, yellow and
blue pixels. In the afternoon, there were some broad and diffuse vertical bands
of lower values. I suspect these bands to be a temperature artifact, as it was
indeed warmer in the afternoon. Other than these broad vertical bands, I do not
see any grouping of colors in a particular direction or any obvious pattern to
the image. This is what I expected to see if there is no correlation between
two point sources of random waveforms and the direction in which the points
lie. I plan on making several more images in the days to come and then do some
experiments on the effect of temperature on the zener diodes. 
I squeezed a LM35DZ temperature sensor onto the
zener "receiver" board and now I read the board's temperature in degrees
centigrade on the Arduino's analog INPUT pin A0. The sensor outputs 10.0 mV per
Cº and the Arduino converts each
millivolt to 0.2048 decimal, so Arduino
decimal = Cº * 2.048. l found good linear correlation of the average
zener peak rates to the board temperature. Zener #1 average counts per
millisecond = Cº * 3.586 + 241 and Zener #2 average counts per millisecond = Cº
* 4.639 + 492. The zeners are not very well matched so I'm not surprised that
the average difference squared to the temperature correlation is not linear. By
calculating a long term average of the difference squared data, I can
compensate for drifting temperature and those broad vertical bands on the
images become much less pronounced.
