Definitely! I wasn't expecting to see a mention of BICEP while reading HN from Pole, particularly not on something as arcane as its star camera.
i know gaia data for instance is available for free but if one used just a homemade telescope could any useful celestial data be acquired?
BICEP, however, is located at the South Pole on a moving ice sheet, requiring frequent updates to its pointing model, and has six months of continuous daylight, so daytime star pointing observations are required. This requires a different technique. Instead of looking at asterisms with multiple stars, the optical pointing telescope is pointed at a single star using an initial pointing model, the telescope pointing is adjusted until the star is centered, and the offset is recorded. This measurement process is repeated for the few dozen brightest stars, which acquires the data needed for refining the pointing model.
One of the more "useful" backyard astronomy tasks that is achievable for a dedicated amateur is variable star observation (eg AAVSO), because many stars don't need huge telescopes to observe and it's very expensive for a big observatory to stare at a single patch of sky for weeks. Nowadays we have instruments like LSST which is basically designed for this sort of surveying, but public data are still useful. And you do need to know exactly where you're pointing, so either you do this manually by pointing at a bunch of target stars, or you can use a guide scope that solves the field for you.