Category: Hawai’i

Exploring the islands

Akatsuka Orchid Gardens

Some tourist traps are worth wandering into.

Akatsuka Orchid Gardens
The showroom at Akatsuka Orchid Gardens
Akatsuka Orchid Gardens is a business that caters to serious gardeners and casual tourists. An oddly diverse clientele, but a seemingly successful business model. Located on Highway 11 halfway between Hilo and Hawaii Volcanoes National Park. The tour buses shuttling visitors between the cruise ships and the volcano often stop here, as do many tourists traveling the usual island loop.

It is worth the stop. Upon entering you are greeted by a profusion of spectacular blooms. Even with no intent to buy you can enjoy the many spectacular blooms. Orchids are utterly amazing in the variety of flower shapes in an array of intense colors.

Akatsuka Orchid Gardens Greenhouse
The main greenhouse at Akatsuka Orchid Gardens
Ever popular Cattleya and Dendrobiums make up the bulk of the offerings. But there are other families represented among the bewildering display of flowers.

There is no charge to enter the main showroom to view the many orchids for sale. Many spectacular blooms are simply on display. For a fee they offer a growing operation tour, probably a must for an orchidphile, but the cost was a little steep, $35 per person.

All of the plants for sale are pre-inspected and come with export paperwork. Better yet, you can have your order shipped home to avoid the trouble of passing through the various agricultural inspections. The staff has the shipping procedure down to an art, packaging the delicate plants just so and holding the order so it will arrive after you are home from your vacation.

As long as the gardens are not swarming with tourists, just look for the tour buses, I would recommend stopping. If my home on the dry side were a little more orchid friendly I would probably have dropped a few dollars, it was tempting.

Capturing the Mountian Shadow

A high quality pan-tilt-zoom camera on the roof of the observatory at an altitude of 13,630ft? Just too much fun. I have found myself logging into the camera at sunset to enjoy the view, or keeping the video in the corner of my screen through a Hawaiian blizzard. I have even forwarded images to a local television station when they requested views of a white Christmas in Hawaiʻi. Yes, they used them for the evening news!

Weather Mast
The Keck weather mast with a sonic anemometer at top, MastCam, and the housings for the temperature, humidity and barometric pressure sensors.
This camera can do more… The camera is an Axis Q6044-E dome style security camera. The camera contains a small Linux computer with a huge array of scripting and control options. Combined with a 720p HD camera, reasonably decent optics, and an accurate PTZ mechanism the camera is quite capable.

To make the best of this wonderful toy I need some tools. To that end several Python programs have been written, including a camera scheduler. This program takes a text file with a schedule and captures images at the programmed time and date. All of this was easy to implement in Python, all of the necessary ‘net protocol support is available in the libraries.

The schedule file can contain any number of separate schedules for multiple sequences. At the specified time the program insures the camera is set properly, moves the camera to the correct position and captures the image. Each sequence is saved to a unique directory and given a sequential name suitable for compiling time lapse video. Add a simple GUI to allow images and status to be monitored and the program becomes a very useful tool.

There are now multiple sequences running… Photos of the summit ridge at each sunset, the shadow of the GPS antenna every day at noon, the Kohala mountain every day mid-morning, the TMT construction site several times a day, and more.

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