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oaCapture 0.0.5 beta for Linux is released!

JamesF

By JamesF
in Discussions - Software

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JamesF

JamesF

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Well, I’ve done as much testing as I can face, if not as much as I’d like to have done. Managing 50-ish virtual machines and a couple of desktops booting into five different OS releases has got the better of me though and I just want this one out of the door now despite the trepidation that always goes with a new release.

The major addition for this release is the majority of the support for the QHY5L-II. I only have the mono version of the camera, so I can’t be certain that colour works.

In addition there’s a new camera controls dialog and the “private” controls for the SPC900 are implemented.  Other user-visible changes mostly relate to usability.

There are now two versions of each of the 32-bit and 64-bit binary releases to handle differences in libraries in the base distributions. Distributions based on Ubuntu 12.04 such as Mint 13 and DistroAstro have their own binaries. Unfortunately it appears for the time being that these releases may not support the SPC900 properly.

The major task for the next release is to port the entire application to OSX and get it working on a MacBook Pro. The current sources build though they don’t work correctly. I’m hopeful that it should be possible to get the QHY5, QHY5L-II and the entire range of ASI cameras all working on OSX however.  I'd also like to make a start on support for filter wheels.

Downloads are all here: http://www.openastroproject.org/downloads/

James

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JamesF

JamesF

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Don't work as in USB or other aspect?

I can get the cameras connected to USB and in the case of the QHY cameras get the firmware downloaded to them.  That seems to work fine.  The sources also build, run and find the cameras present.  Nothing is displayed when I connect to the camera however.  I suspect it is an issue relating to threading.  My guess is that there's either a race condition preventing the relevant code from being run, or that I've neglected to wrap something in a mutex when it should have been and the compiler has (quite fairly) optimised code in such a way that it shows up my error.

I suspect the latter.  Maintaining sufficient context in one's head when only doing an hour or so of coding each night (and not even every night) makes it very easy to fail to realise a mutex is required around certain pieces of code.  It wouldn't be the first time I've been caught out that way.  Hopefully it shouldn't be too hard to find/fix though.

James

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rwg

rwg

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Nice one :)

I only tend to use Linux as a server OS, but I can whip up a quick desktop VM and test some of the cameras you are missing for you. I have an ASI130MM, QHY5LII colour and ASI035MC.

I know the pain of the SPC900 - I spent weeks reverse engineering the non-standard way they handle the controls on that camera so that I could show the full range of properties in SharpCap :grin:

cheers,

Robin

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NickK

NickK

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Just a note about OSX and HID devices - they need the runloop to run before they will process events. 

Additionally check the operation lengths. OSX will only transfer the bytes you ask for - and in the event of a time out it will not return bytes (even if just one byte is still to be received). This can impact flushing.

Two points worthy of checking.. welcome.. to the cross-plaform world ;)

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JamesF

JamesF

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Nice one :)

I only tend to use Linux as a server OS, but I can whip up a quick desktop VM and test some of the cameras you are missing for you. I have an ASI130MM, QHY5LII colour and ASI035MC.

I know the pain of the SPC900 - I spent weeks reverse engineering the non-standard way they handle the controls on that camera so that I could show the full range of properties in SharpCap :grin:

If you're able to test those cameras at some point that would be marvellous, Robin.  I've no idea how well they might work from a VM over USB I have to admit.  I tend to use the VMs for checking code compiles and the application runs, then real hardware for making sure the cameras function.

Actually, I tend to have all the cameras I'm testing plugged into a powered USB hub that I switch between a 32-bit multi-boot machine, a similar 64-bit machine and the Raspberry Pi.  That did lead me down a blind alley for a while with the QHY cameras because they retain their firmware and their new USB VID/PID pair when the hub is unplugged from the computer and weren't getting properly initialised when plugged into different machine.  I guess its a rare use case, which is just as well as I'm not entirely sure at the moment how I can change things so the system copes properly.

I love the SPC900 because it's such a cheap way into planetary imaging, and hate it because it's such a pig to support.  I was kind of hoping that if I ignored the fact that it didn't work on Ubuntu 12.04 the problem would eventually go away, but I think I'm going to end up writing a user-space driver for it for OSX so I'll probably make it work on Ubuntu 12.04 too.  It is a long-term support release, after all.

James

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JamesF

JamesF

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Just a note about OSX and HID devices - they need the runloop to run before they will process events. 

Additionally check the operation lengths. OSX will only transfer the bytes you ask for - and in the event of a time out it will not return bytes (even if just one byte is still to be received). This can impact flushing.

Two points worthy of checking.. welcome.. to the cross-plaform world ;)

More of a welcome back for me, really :)  I started my career porting C applications between all sorts of different UNIX-ish  systems (when there used to be dozens of different ones, all subtley different) on all sorts of different processor architectures.

We'll see how the OSX thing goes though.  I have lobbed myself in at the deep end a bit.  I was aware of the USB data transfer issues and they could potentially become a problem with the QHY cameras as they're not the most well-behaved of devices.

James

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JamesF

JamesF

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Hmmm.  Well...  It looks like as far as the ASI cameras are concerned on OSX I get no frames back from their SDK when I ask it for one, which is not a good sign.  I'll try to rip the OpenCV stuff out of their demos because I don't want to install it and see if I can get them at least reading data from the camera without it.

Meantime I might have a play with the QHY5L-II instead as I can at least see down to the libusb level with that.

James

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tekkydave

tekkydave

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James, just tried the latest beta on Ubuntu 13.10 64 bit using my ASI120MC. All seems to work ok. How do I turn off the auto exposure? Whenever I change the exposure the camera adjusts itself. Next to the gain control it says 'Auto' but there is no option to switch to manual. Or have I misunderstood the way it should work? Apart from that it's looking good.

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tekkydave

tekkydave

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Here is a screenshot immediately after selecting the camera in the Device menu. There are no controls in the Auto column. I can get a tick box to appear next to the 'Gamma' or 'Brightness' buttons if I change the values. Any help appreciated.

post-28249-0-51365100-1399490411_thumb.j

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JamesF

JamesF

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Ah.  If you go to Settings->Camera then you should get access to all the camera controls in one pane.  Something odd is going on with my camera at the moment, but that may be because I changed the firmware on it this morning to test it with the MacBook.  I'll test that out as soon as I have a moment.

James

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JamesF

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Looks like it is a bug in the handling of setting auto exposure values, which is exceptionally annoying :embarassed:   Comes of trying to handle some cameras that have on/off settings for auto-exposure and others where manual/auto exposure are just two of a range of possibilities (and manual isn't 0, either).  It will be fixed in the next release.  Now I have the OSX version working I'm vacillating over whether I do a quick pre-OSX release because actually packaging everything up to do an OSX binary release is harder than getting it to work in the first place and every time I contemplate it I start to lose the will to live...

James

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JamesF

JamesF

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I've got a QHY5L-II Color on the way. So I'll test when it arrives :)

That would be really useful.  There are bits of code that are only used for the colour version of the camera (eg. the setting of the gain values is handled differently and the blue and red balance settings are rolled in with that).  As such that code has never been tested.

James

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mitchelln

mitchelln

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Right-ho. I'll let you know how I get on. I'd love to run this. My laptop runs for an hour longer under Ubuntu and I just start swearing within minutes if I have to boot it into Windows for something ;)

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JamesF

JamesF

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On a related note, I intend to have v0.0.6 out before the end of the month.  It has mostly been about porting everything to OSX, but also has a few bugfixes in the camera support library.

James

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mitchelln

mitchelln

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Okay, the QHY came this morning. Very fast delivery from Modern Astronomy!

I've installed 0.0.5 on my 64bit Ubuntu 14.04 box followed the install instructions and rebooted. The udev rules are installed pointing to the QHY firmware directory.

With the QHY plugged in I start oacapture and see the console messase "libusb_open for QHY5II failed". I guess I'm missing something.

dmesg returns:

[ 5937.892272] usb 2-6.3: new high-speed USB device number 8 using ehci-pci
[ 5937.984396] usb 2-6.3: New USB device found, idVendor=1618, idProduct=0920
[ 5937.984400] usb 2-6.3: New USB device strings: Mfr=0, Product=0, SerialNumber=0
[ 5938.206520] usb 2-6.3: USB disconnect, device number 8
[ 5939.940269] usb 2-6.3: new high-speed USB device number 9 using ehci-pci
[ 5940.032767] usb 2-6.3: New USB device found, idVendor=1618, idProduct=0921
[ 5940.032771] usb 2-6.3: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=0
[ 5940.032774] usb 2-6.3: Product: QHY5-II 12-5-1   
[ 5940.032777] usb 2-6.3: Manufacturer: QHC-CCD  
[ 6005.546857] Linux video capture interface: v2.00
[ 6005.553360] usbcore: registered new interface driver uvcvideo
[ 6005.553362] USB Video Class driver (1.1.1)
 

Any ideas?

Thanks!

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JamesF

JamesF

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That looks like udev has seen the camera and uploaded the firmware.  Perhaps there's still some sort of permissions issue though.  Does it work if you run it as root?

James

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