Raspberry pi, QHY5L-ii-m, PHD2

[coralaholic]

I have a few problems of my pi running the Astroberry server.  I'm now breaking down the mess and trying to resolve it one by one. Here is one that can be easily described and I'm more confident it can be resolved. 

I use the packaged Ekos/ INDI sever. I connect the QHY5L-ii-m as guide camera directly to the pi USB 2.0 port (so avoiding the potential known issue on the USB3.0 / 2.4G wifi interference problem), Ekos/ INDI and PHD2 can connect to it, however it can't get any frames. The little red LED light of the cam blinks, does it mean it is capturing frames?

Re the attached screen dump, I've also included the demsg, is there anyone experienced the same? How did you resolve it?

Cheers.

[JamesF]

Is this the latest version of INDI (1.8.5, I think)?  I've heard some rumours about lack of stability in recent releases of the QHY SDK and somehow INDI now appears to have a later version of the SDK than is available on QHY's website (my suspicion is that Jasem either has access to the source code and is building his own versions, or they're being built specifically for him), so there may be bugfixes in that release.

James

[vineyard]

Hello,

I'm by no means an expert on this so will defer to others (in fact I tried starting with Astroberry but couldn't get it to work in a stable way so went the Stellarmate way (on the same pi) and that seems much better, fingers crossed).

I think the guide function on EKOS is a bit volatile (I also have occasional exposure fail issues).  Maybe try a couple of things: (1) the bin on the guide at 2z2 not 1x1 (which is what the screenshot seems to show it as) - the EKOS manual suggests 2x2, and (2) the exposure time on the guide (I have to tweak that from 1 to 1.5 to 2 sec depending on target).  This is based on ZWO cameras not QHY so I don't know about hardware side (& I use EKOS' internal guider not PHD2 so I don't know if that might also be making a difference).

Good luck,

Vin

[coralaholic]

1 hour ago, JamesF said:

Is this the latest version of INDI (1.8.5, I think)?  I've heard some rumours about lack of stability in recent releases of the QHY SDK and somehow INDI now appears to have a later version of the SDK than is available on QHY's website (my suspicion is that Jasem either has access to the source code and is building his own versions, or they're being built specifically for him), so there may be bugfixes in that release.

James

I reinstalled the entire astroberry 2 days ago I assume it comes with the latest INDI version.  One stupid question, how can I check the INDI version?

I have also followed the following link to reinstall Kstars and INDI, but I'm not sure the reinstallation really works since after each commands it seems nothing really happened, I can still open up Kstar / INDI after the 2 purges, any ideas? 

https://baheyeldin.com/astronomy/installing-latest-kstars-ekos-and-indi-library-ubuntu-1604.html

sudo aptitude purge indi-bin libindi-data libindi1 libindidriver1
sudo aptitude purge kstars kstars-data

sudo apt-add-repository ppa:mutlaqja/ppa
sudo aptitude update

sudo aptitude install indi-full kstars-bleeding

 

Edited April 22, 2020 by coralaholic

[stash_old]

12 minutes ago, coralaholic said:

I reinstalled the entire astroberry 2 days ago I assume it comes with the latest INDI version.

Astroberry if not always up todate and you cant use "nightly Indi" versions either without problems. Astroberry comes as a complete package of tried and tested versions of software - only one person does the updating @Radek so you can imagine thats a hefty job. It is also done for a good reason - being a leader of the pack tends also to be the first to find problems is Astroberry is the tortoise which meets most people's needs.

Individual software ,e.g. Oacapture,CCDCIEL etc can normally be updated via there normal routes on Astroberry.

As always (so for repeating) but people should NEVER update their PI WITHOUT doing a backup first - in the end its a lot less hassle,just taking a backup, than reinstalling from scratch etc. SD cards are cheap so no real excuse! 🙂

Ok sometimes you may have a badly behaved piece of hardware (why do QHY camera's always seem to be the ones - maybe it me)  then take advice of Radek or one of the Indi developers BEFORE just doing an "update" - they only bite sometimes 🙂

 

[coralaholic]

2 hours ago, JamesF said:

Is this the latest version of INDI (1.8.5, I think)?  I've heard some rumours about lack of stability in recent releases of the QHY SDK and somehow INDI now appears to have a later version of the SDK than is available on QHY's website (my suspicion is that Jasem either has access to the source code and is building his own versions, or they're being built specifically for him), so there may be bugfixes in that release.

James

Possible, seems Jasem did updated the 4 qhy related files, not sure what they do, but I'd like to try reinstall it.  Now I need to get my commands work.

https://launchpad.net/~mutlaqja/+archive/ubuntu/ppa/+index?batch=75&memo=150&start=150

indi-qhy	2.6~202004201859~ubuntu18.04.1	Jasem Mutlaq (2020-04-20)
indi-qhy	2.6~202004201859~ubuntu16.04.1	Jasem Mutlaq (2020-04-20)
indi-qhy	2.6~202004201858~ubuntu20.04.1	Jasem Mutlaq (2020-04-20)
indi-qhy	2.6~202004201857~ubuntu19.10.1	Jasem Mutlaq (2020-04-20)

[coralaholic]

13 hours ago, stash_old said:

Astroberry if not always up todate and you cant use "nightly Indi" versions either without problems. Astroberry comes as a complete package of tried and tested versions of software - only one person does the updating @Radek so you can imagine thats a hefty job. It is also done for a good reason - being a leader of the pack tends also to be the first to find problems is Astroberry is the tortoise which meets most people's needs.

Individual software ,e.g. Oacapture,CCDCIEL etc can normally be updated via there normal routes on Astroberry.

As always (so for repeating) but people should NEVER update their PI WITHOUT doing a backup first - in the end its a lot less hassle,just taking a backup, than reinstalling from scratch etc. SD cards are cheap so no real excuse! 🙂

Ok sometimes you may have a badly behaved piece of hardware (why do QHY camera's always seem to be the ones - maybe it me)  then take advice of Radek or one of the Indi developers BEFORE just doing an "update" - they only bite sometimes 🙂

 

Thanks for the advice/ info. Backing up the pi is definitely necessary if ones got it full working or customization.  My case is like debugging the QHY connections on a fresh astorberry (with just the polemaster installed manually) using the try and error approach, I don't mind to reinstall it entirely as it takes me no effort.