oaCapture 0.4.0 release

[JamesF]

There's a lot of work gone into this release, almost none of which is user-visible

I have completely re-written the camera-handling library so it works far more elegantly and along the way resolved a number of design problems resulting from my original version as well as fixed a few outstanding bugs.  I hope I've reached the point where I'll now tend to be extending functionality rather than changing it.

More user-visible changes include support for the ZWO "high speed" control and building against the latest ZWO SDK.  Support for the Microsoft Lifecam should also hopefully be somewhat less broken than it has been.  In addition I've added "experimental" support for the ZWO v2 SDK, though I've not had much luck getting it to work with anything other than the ASI120MM-S, so it can only be enabled by manually editing the configuration file for the time being.

With the exception of a few bugfixes, that's pretty much it.

For the next release perhaps the most important planned change is to enable the creation of output files for raw colour data that are recognised on Windows and can therefore be read straight into Registax or AS!2.  This may affect mono data too, but I've not tested that.  I also want to change the filter wheel library in the same way that I've just changed the camera library.  And there appears to be some sort of colour-handling problem with colour TIS FireWire cameras.  Initially it probably stems from the fact that they claim to provide an 8-bit greyscale image when in fact it's raw colour, but this is something I'm having to work on blind unless I can find such a camera to work with myself.

Downloads at http://www.openastroproject.org/downloads/

James

[MCinAZ]

Hi James,

  Do you have a list of cameras presently supported by oaCapture? Perhaps along the lines of the various Linux hardware lists for printers, scanners etc. showing full/mostly/partial status? If so, could you provide a pointer.

  Thanks,

  -- Mike --

[Blazar]

Thanks James...all my images still being captured with your application, and it is greatly appreciated.

Regards

[JamesF]

Hi James,

  Do you have a list of cameras presently supported by oaCapture? Perhaps along the lines of the various Linux hardware lists for printers, scanners etc. showing full/mostly/partial status? If so, could you provide a pointer.

  Thanks,

  -- Mike --

What I have at the moment is this:  http://www.openastroproject.org/documentation/supported-cameras/

There may well be many other cameras that do work but I just don't know about them.

A table of cameras that have been tested by myself or others and are known to function (or not) sounds like a good idea.  I'll look at doing something like that.

James

[daz]

James

Happy to test my Atik One, but I'll need to set up a VM. Any preference on the distro to use?

[JamesF]

There's no support for the newer Atik cameras yet (other than the GP) I'm afraid.

James

[fmazzanti]

Hi folks,

I'm new to thsi forum so this is my first post

I just wanted to let you know that I am not able to use my Imaging Source DMK21 (USB) camera under 

any version of oaCapture... With 0.4.0 it is recognized but not even the preview appears... it does nothing.

With previous releases (0.3.0 0.2.0 ...) the preview is there, but half the screen is black and seems insensitive 

to light changes, while the upper half does get from darker to lighter, but no image is focused (and I'm using a small refractor with the camera).

So shall it be like this? I see on the web that OSX support for these USB cameras is there, but I can't manage to make it work. WHat am I missing? Any software I must pre-install? Any special configuration to 

do?

I'm running OSX Mavericks 64bit on a 2013 iMac...

Best regards and thanks,

Ferran.

[JamesF]

Not sure about that one.  I have a USB DMK21 and it works perfectly with 0.4.0 on a 2013 MacBook Pro running Yosemite.  I'll reboot into Mavericks and try it now.  You shouldn't need to install any other software.

James

[JamesF]

Well, it seems my DMK21 also works fine on the same machine with Yosemite.  I was fairly sure I'd tested it

I'm not sure what to suggest next.  Perhaps running the application from a terminal window might help.  Any error messages should then be displayed in that window.  Do you know how to do that?

James

[fmazzanti]

Thanks for the quick input

Yes I opened a terminal, went to /Applications/ and executed ./oaCapture.app/Contents/MacOS/oaCapture

which did start the program and it started, spitting on teh terminal

libpng warning: iCCP: known incorrect sRGB profile

then I went to the Device tab and selected (UVC) DMK21AU618.AS which did say 'DMK21AU618.AS' connected on the bottom left of the program, but no preview shows up, while on the terminal ot prints

attempt to claim already-claimed interface 1

and nothign else...  No preview and no camera working

Any other hint to trace all that up?

Thanks a lot,

Ferran.

[fmazzanti]

More news (good ones

looks like the default 60fps was preventing the preview window from working, but after dropping to

40fps or so the image appears and the preview seems to do what it has to do (although I have not checked with a scope, it does show a complete image which different gray levels corresponding to different illuminationss). Still, I try to capture but I can't, since the red (record?) button is greyed. I hope his is easier

to solve Any idea?

Thanks and sorry for all the truble,

Ferran.

PD: be it the way it is, I find it very interesting to have a program that makes this camera work under OSX. A big THANKS to you !!

[JamesF]

That's very interesting, and good news.  I've just checked my own camera (exactly the same model) and it runs very happily at 60fps.  What processor do you have in your machine?

The red button is to stop recording.  The blue arrow is to start a recording.  They should display tooltips for that, but perhaps sometimes that doesn't happen.

James

[fmazzanti]

Ok the answer was easy: I'm a nob  

The red button is to stop recording, not star... sorry.

Still now I've beem able to trace down the problem: the camera does not work at 60fps on this program, but it does work at 30fps,, and records as you said

But not at 60fps.... Not a big problem anyway.

Thanks again,

Ferran.

[JamesF]

Excellent

In case you were thinking of moving the captured files to Windows for processing, you may find that AutoStakkert!2 and Registax won't read AVI format files immediately.  If you preprocess them using AstroPIPP then they should work.  I will be fixing this for the next release.  Or you can use SER format.  That should work too.

James

[fmazzanti]

More news (good ones

looks like the default 60fps was preventing the preview window from working, but after dropping to

40fps or so the image appears and the preview seems to do what it has to do (although I have not checked with a scope, it does show a complete image which different gray levels corresponding to different illuminationss). Still, I try to capture but I can't, since the red (record?) button is greyed. I hope his is easier

to solve Any idea?

Thanks and sorry for all the truble,

Ferran.

PD: be it the way it is, I find it very interesting to have a program that makes this camera work under OSX. A big THANKS to you !!

Hi James,

this is a 21.5 inch iMac, 2.9GHz Intel Core I5 with 8Gb RAM at 1600MHz DDR3 and a nVidia Graphics card GT750M with 1024Mb RAM

It's a fairly new model, plenty of CPU power and RAM. I don't think the lack of 60fps functionality is related to insufficient hardware.

Maybe the nVidia card?

WHat I can say is that as soon as I set it to work at 60fps, the preview stops updating and there's no way to record.

I can also try that on my MacBook air and report if you want.

Best regards and thanks again,

Ferran.

[David Smith]

Hi James

I have tried on a couple of occasions to get oacapture to work on my Mint17 desktop (32bit version) with my QHY5-II mono camera but have been unsuccessful at each. It seems that Mint does not recognize the camera at all and hence although I have successfully installed oacapture I cannot use it with the QHY5. When I connect the camera and use lsusb I get a blank entry under ID 1618:0920 but the system does not recognize the device (screenshot below).

Not strictly an oacapture issue I know but just wandered if you have come across this previously.

Thanks

[JamesF]

Hi James,

this is a 21.5 inch iMac, 2.9GHz Intel Core I5 with 8Gb RAM at 1600MHz DDR3 and a nVidia Graphics card GT750M with 1024Mb RAM

It's a fairly new model, plenty of CPU power and RAM. I don't think the lack of 60fps functionality is related to insufficient hardware.

Maybe the nVidia card?

WHat I can say is that as soon as I set it to work at 60fps, the preview stops updating and there's no way to record.

I can also try that on my MacBook air and report if you want.

Best regards and thanks again,

Ferran.

The important thing is I guess that it does at least mostly work.  The spec of your machine looks better than my MBP, so I agree that doesn't appear to be the problem.  I don't think the video card should be a problem either, because by default the frame rate for the preview is only 15fps regardless of the rate at which frames are being captured.

It's something of a mystery at the moment

If you have the opportunity to try it on the MacBook AIr that would be great.  I don't know of anyone else who has done so yet.

Thanks,

James

[JamesF]

The USB VID/PID of 1618:0920 is what the camera has before the firmware has loaded.  Once the firmware is loaded it should reset and reconnect to the USB bus as 1618:0921 (as far as I'm aware -- I don't have one of these to test myself but I believe it behaves exactly the same as the QHY5L-II that I do have).

That suggests to me that either the udev rules are not working or that fxload is not installed.  If you haven't copied the udev rules, they're in the tar file and need to be put in /etc/udev/rules.d.  On Mint 17 you do need to restart udev manually when the udev rules are updated, either by rebooting or running:

# service udev restart

If fxload isn't installed then you just need to run

# apt-get install fxload

Finally if you're not a member of the "users" group you'll need to add yourself to that so you have access rights for to connect to the USB device for the camera.  That will require logging in again to take effect.

Most of this should get sorted when I get around to packaging everything up as a .deb and .rpm files, but that's proving rather more tricky than expected to achieve.

James

[David Smith]

Thanks, will have a play later. Fxload is definitely installed and i am in tge users group but need to check udev. Will let you know how I get on.

[fmazzanti]

The important thing is I guess that it does at least mostly work.  The spec of your machine looks better than my MBP, so I agree that doesn't appear to be the problem.  I don't think the video card should be a problem either, because by default the frame rate for the preview is only 15fps regardless of the rate at which frames are being captured.

It's something of a mystery at the moment

If you have the opportunity to try it on the MacBook AIr that would be great.  I don't know of anyone else who has done so yet.

Thanks,

James

James,

the *least* thing I can do for you is to try that on the MacBook air, so count on it

I have to go and pick it up... Will report on that later.

Best wishes,

Ferran.

[Davey-T]

Hi James, just got around to downloading 0.4.0, using the Skyris 274M, MBP late 2013 , thanks for the pause button which works OK but unfortunately the stop button doesn't stop it and stays "greyed out" the only way to stop is disconnect the camera, original version still works to start and stop.

Dave

[JamesF]

Hi James, just got around to downloading 0.4.0, using the Skyris 274M, MBP late 2013 , thanks for the pause button which works OK but unfortunately the stop button doesn't stop it and stays "greyed out" the only way to stop is disconnect the camera, original version still works to start and stop.

Dave

Is that when you're recording with a limit on frames or time, Dave?

James

[fmazzanti]

Hi again,

I tested that with the MacBook Air and it does indeed work at 60fps... This is even better news as I am actually planning to use it with the laptop rather than the desktop, but it still puzzles me as to why it does not work on the iMac at 60fps... Maybe it is conflicting with something else I have installed also?

Go figure :/

Best regards,

Ferran.

[Davey-T]

No limit, I just downloaded it and had a quick try, started capturing and it pauses but won't stop.

Dave

[JamesF]

No limit, I just downloaded it and had a quick try, started capturing and it pauses but won't stop.

Dave

Very strange.  I did that loads when testing.  I'll look into it.

James