oaCapture 0.5.0 release

[JamesF]

Despite finishing the coding a couple of weeks back life has been rather hectic of late and I've not had the time to roll everything up into a release and build the binary packages until now.  oaCapture 0.5.0 for Linux and 64-bit OSX is now available

The most important change for this release is the support for Windows DIB format avi files, meaning 8-bit greyscale and raw colour images should import straight into Registax and AS!2.  There's an option in the settings pane to enable this.  Thanks are due to Chris Garry for contributing the code to write this format.

In addition there's an "auto" option for the colour mask format which will make oaCapture use what the camera driver claims to be the correct format if indeed it does so at all.  If you use this, be aware that for some cameras the drivers don't report the correct format.

The USB DFK21 and other similar colour TIS models should now work.  They report a colour mask format that wasn't recognised.

Colour Skyris cameras should work on OSX.  I've never seen these fail that I recall, but I had a problem reported with these cameras that I believe is now fixed.

I've made a first pass at implementing a focus aid.

There's somewhat ropey support for the QHY5-II.  Documentation for this camera is near non-existent so I've had to make it up as I went along a little.  It seems to work for me sometimes, but it's nowhere near as stable as I'd like.

And as well as the usual stack of bugfixes there's an additional change just for Gina to allow longer exposure times with the QHY5

I've not got as far as updating the manual yet, but if I waited until I had time for that it would be ages before the software was available.

Downloads here

James

[D4N]

Nice one, I'll give it a go and let you know if I find any problems

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

[Davey-T]

Downloaded and connects to Skyris 274 mono OK. Thanks for the pause button, works a treat

Hopefully we'll get some Sun to try it out.

Dave

[vincent-FA]

I updated the Arch Linux AUR package for this version. Thanks again for the hard work with oaCapture!

[borrowedcarbon]

...oaCapture 0.5.0 for Linux and 64-bit OSX is now available

Downloads here

James

Thank you for the software!

I can confirm that PGR Chameleon (13S2M) works with libdc1394 / oaCapture in Yosemite. I'm using a MacBook Pro and this is a USB 2 camera.

I followed the instructions <a href="http://www.ptgrey.com/KB/10868">here</a>  to install libdc1394.

I can capture video at 640 x 480, 1280 x 480, 1280 x 960. Now all I need is a clear sky.

- Dave

[JamesF]

Good news.  Unfortunately I don't have any of the PGR cameras other than the Firefly MV, so my ability to test them is a little limited.

James

[D4N]

Hi James,

I have tested 0.5.0 with my ASI120mm on OSX 10.10.3 and Raspbian 7.

All working well so far

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

[JamesF]

Good news

James

[bilbo-le-hobbit]

Thank you for your software, it looks really good! I tried with my DMK 41AU02.AS, it works. But I have problems with the camera I borrowed my astronomy club, the DFK51AU02.AS. In OACAPTURE, it appears in the list, but can not connect with.

Typing lsusb, it gives this :

Bus 001 Device 005: ID 199e:8102 The Imaging Source Europe GmbH 

I think the problem could be there, but I am not able to solve it.

I was forced to keep my old file 70-tis-cameras.rules. With the new files, my DMK41AU02.AS was not recognized. It looks like this:

# Udev rules for TIS CCD cameras#ACTION!="add", GOTO="tis_end"SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ENV{DEVTYPE}=="usb_device", GOTO="tis_test"SUBSYSTEM!="usb_device", GOTO="tis_end"LABEL="tis_test"ATTRS{idVendor}=="199e", ATTRS{idProduct}=="8101", RUN+="/usr/local/bin/config-tis-camera.sh"LABEL="tis_end"

and :

#!/bin/bash## Load and appropriately configure UVC video driver for the USB TIS CCD# camerasUSB_ID="199e 8101"/sbin/modprobe uvcvideo && echo $USB_ID > /sys/bus/usb/drivers/uvcvideo/new_id

I'm on Linux mint 17.1 64 bits, linux kernel : 3.13.0-37

[JamesF]

The 21, 31 and 41 models have firmware that is UVC-compliant, but they just don't advertise themselves as camera devices.  Fortunately by loading the UVC driver and forcing it to recognise those USB ids as cameras it should work.  I'll check that the ruleset for these is still working for me on Mint 17.

I believe that the DFK51 is different and doesn't have UVC-compliant firmware.  I'm still looking into how it might be possible to support these devices given that there is no documentation for them that I can find.

James

[bilbo-le-hobbit]

DFK51AU02.AS works with guvcview BUT but there are issues with the colors :

https://flic.kr/p/tE9D9j

The same with IC Capture on win xp :

https://flic.kr/p/tEhuXn

[JamesF]

Well, that's interesting.  Looks like it might be a UVC camera.  Can you plug the camera in and give me the output of "dmesg" that relates to the camera device?  It probably won't be more than ten lines or so.

James

[bilbo-le-hobbit]

[12273.696275] usb 1-1.1: new high-speed USB device number 7 using ehci-pci

[12273.790131] usb 1-1.1: New USB device found, idVendor=199e, idProduct=8102

[12273.790134] usb 1-1.1: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=3

[12273.790136] usb 1-1.1: Product: DFK 51AU02.AS

[12273.790138] usb 1-1.1: Manufacturer: The Imaging Source Europe GmbH

[12273.790139] usb 1-1.1: SerialNumber: 3510712

[12274.717416] uvcvideo: Found UVC 1.00 device DFK 51AU02.AS (199e:8102)

[JamesF]

Ok, that does indeed look like a UVC device then.

In oaCapture, does it appear twice in the devices menu, once under V4L2 and once under UVC ?

James

[bilbo-le-hobbit]

Only under (V4L2). the webcam on my laptop also appears under v4l2

[JamesF]

Ok.  That may be down to one of several reasons, so I'll check it out.

The colour TIS UVC cameras don't work properly with V4L2 because the frame formats they offer aren't ones that are supported by the UVC kernel driver.  The mono cameras do work with V4L2.  To get the colour cameras working you have to use oaCapture's user-space UVC interface instead.  You may not be offered this because of a permissions problem that can be fixed with udev rules files, or I may need to force the UVC interface to be available under Linux as well as OSX.  Once I've had a chance to test with my own cameras I'll let you know what I find.

James

[Blazar]

Thanks James. Will download and have a play.

[JamesF]

Looks like there are some potential execution paths with systemd/udevd that I'd not thought of and they prevent some of the TIS cameras being recognised sometimes.  I think I can mostly fix that, but possibly not for the situation where the new udev rules are installed when the UVC driver is already present.  I think that might be an acceptable issue given that removing and reloading the module or rebooting will fix it.  I'll add some notes in the documentation.

James

[bilbo-le-hobbit]

Thank you for your efforts, James!

I noticed that my camera product id is 8102. In the file 70-tis-cameras-uvc.rules the product id is 8101. Is that a problem? I have tried to edit the file to change the number, no change.

[JamesF]

8101 is the product id for the 21, 31 and 41 models.  I wasn't aware that the 51 had a different id.  But as it appears to be a true UVC camera, albeit one that doesn't offer a frame type that isn't supported by the kernel UVC driver, it will have to be slightly differently.  Hopefully I can get that sorted for the next release.

James

[thanders]

Hi!

I just bought an Imagingsource DFK31AF03.AS FireWire colour camera and try to make it work under OS X v10.10.3 without success.

No problem in PHD2 or FaceTime. In oaCapture the camera connects but no images in preview or when capturing.

Should I use some specific settings? I have no clues. What could be the problem?

/Thomas

[JamesF]

I'm aware of one specific problem with TIS colour FireWire cameras which I have fixed.  I'm hoping to get release 0.6.0 out this weekend which should fix that.

James

[thanders]

Sounds great. A really big thing there is an application for capturing under OS X!

I'm looking forward to use it!

/Thomas

[devoldev]

HI; I am a new member from Italy; at this moment I am using 0.5.0 with a Point Grey Chameleon CMLN-13S2M-CS; it works but unfortunately oaCapture is not able to completely set the CCD; e.g. the shutter time is limited between1 and  66ms and not longer and so on sometimes it arrives to 266 by chance; binning is not active; avi files cannot be recored, or at least not in all cases there is some instability; however for a mac user it is better than nothing certainly; will the 0.6.0 give some update for mac users? thanks to supernova for his job and comments

[devoldev]

Hi I am an italian observer new for this list; I used oacapture 0.5.0 with Chameleon CMLN-13S2M-CS under mac os x 10.6.8; it works quite well; there are some problems; sometimes it doesn't start; other times the exposure time is shown as 1-10/10-100 and other times prolonged to 100-266 ms; the longer times as until 30s are not shown at all; binning is not allowed; however it works; some times it is possible to record .mov some times no; this differences appears strange; however thanks to JamesF for his job; is it necessary to install the libdc1394 also under 10.6.8?