Record video AND do other stuff?

[birdman101]

Simple question I think. I want to set up a pi and raspcam so that there can be simultaneous image tracking and recording. More specifically, I want the pi to control a couple of motors that will allow the camera to record a slow-moving object (i.e. the moon) at high resolution without losing sight of it. Is this possible? Most of what I've read indicates "yes," but I have not found an example of this particular implementation.

I’m aware that I’ll need some optics, motor controllers, etc. I feel competent with regard to those sorts of things. But I’ve never done anything serious with a pi, so I’m not sure how well it can record video while doing other things. I’ve seen some tutorials in which two video streams are recorded at the same time. There’s also one about taking still shots during continuous video recording. So I’m hopeful that the video recording is based on interrupts or a hardware module that allows the processor to focus elsewhere, especially since my image tracking needs are pretty simple (just need to periodically recenter the field of view on the bright spot).

[Navyscourge]

I assume that you are running a modern OS on your Pi: such as Raspbian. This and other modern OSs are by design multi tasking. It will run several things at once. You don't say which model of Pi you have (or are planning to get) but the Pi2 has enough processing power for what you want to do (and more).

If you want to do "serious" photography with the moon, you should consider getting an Equatorial Mount for your camera. It rotates around an axis that matches what happens to the sky. You point the axis at the North / South 'pole' in the sky (i.e. aligning the mounting's axis to the Earth's axis of rotation), and turn it at the same rate as the Earth rotates. You can get some info here: http://www.astropix.com/HTML/I_ASTROP/MOUNTS.HTM. This suggests that such a mount is expensive, as low cost ones are not stable enough to get good pictures. However, this page (http://www.philharrington.net/scotch.htm) gives instruction on how to make a manual one - you would need to add a motor. In the spirit of Pi DIY this might be the path to take, and you might avoid wasting money on something that does not work well enough

Good Luck

[birdman101]

Thanks for this nice reply. I guess I will jump down the rabbit hole and obtain what I need both in terms of hardware and know-how.