LAMSkyCam: A low-cost and miniature ground-based sky camera

Ground-based sky imagers (GSIs) are increasingly becoming popular amongst the remote sensing analysts. This is because such imagers offer fantastic alternatives to satellite measure-ments for the purpose of earth observations. In this paper, we propose an extremely low-cost and miniature ground-based sky camera for atmospheric study. Built using 3D printed and off-the-shelf components, our sky camera is lightweight and robust for use in diverse climatic conditions. With a 63 & DEG; field of view angle, the camera captures high resolution sky/cloud images for both day and night times at 5 min intervals. The camera is designed to be mounted on a pole-like architecture and with its compact form, it can be installed at any location with-out requiring any change in the existing infrastructure. For remote areas, the camera also has a local backup facility from which data can be easily accessed manually. We have open-sourced the hardware design of our sky camera, and therefore researchers can easily manufacture and deploy these cameras for their respective use cases.(c) 2022 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd.