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INDI Library v2.0.6 is Released (02 Feb 2024)

Bi-monthly release with minor bug fixes and improvements

Canon 5D3 over kstar/ekos : indi crashes, no capture

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Thanks, Pask, I know this is frustrating, I had a similar problem at the very beginning when I was connecting my Nikon D3300 to Indi and it would always crash. I do not remember exactly anymore how I solved it, now I am trying to retrace my steps. Also, this is kind of a fun detective game and it helps me also understand the programs and the integration of the different parts into Indi better. So I have to beg you and Jasem to have patience with me, not the other way round.

I looked at your log file and from what I am seeing all goes well with the camera connecting, taking a 10s exposure and then it falls apart due to an 'Unknown event'. That doesn't tell me (at least) anything, except that something went wrong. I can deduce that from the ensuing crash. That's why I proposed to start at the very beginning of the problem, i.e. gphoto2. It could be a gphoto driver problem, as Jasem suspects, or it could be Pi3-related hardware limitations with just too big a data file coming in and the Pi can't handle it. That's my pet theory here. To distinguish between the two I suggested a very simple test: Stop Indi, quit Kstars, open a terminal and simply paste the following commands:

$ cd ~/Pictures

(so that the tmp file I am interested in gets temporarily saved in the same folder as the final image file downloaded from your Canon instead of the /home folder and so you don't clutter your home folder with files you want to manually delete again later)

$ gphoto2 --capture-image-and-download --filename ~/Pictures/Test.CR2 && eom ~/Pictures/Test.CR2

(this will command your Canon to take an image at the settings you specified on your Canon, i.e. with exposure time and the format settings RAW, mRAW or sRAW that you have specified there, then download it to the Pictures folder, calling it Test.CR2, and once that is done open it using the Eye of Mate image viewer. If this all works, then this would likely not be a gphoto problem, but I suspect it will fail)

This is what you should see if gphoto completes the task successfully (not that because I do not have a Canon, but a Nikon, the file is called Test.NEF):



If you are paying close attention to the Terminal after pressing 'Enter', you will briefly see a download bar/notification appear that gphoto is now downloading and saving the file. As you can see from the screenshot, the file will now appear as Test.NEF in my Pictures folder and EoM shows a red image (since my telescope has filter mounted and it is just pointing at my wall inside the house).

If you now repeat the last command again, i.e. take the picture and have it downloaded (you have to close the image window first, because that process is still running in the terminal), gphoto will note that there is already a picture present with the same name and ask you whether you want to overwrite it or give it a new name. That in itself is not important, what is important is that gphoto saves an intermediate tmpfile until you have made up your mind about what to do with it:



It is this tmpfile I am interested in, because the size of it will tell us whether gphoto starts to download the file from your Canon and then gets overwhelmed by the size and aborts, leaving a truncated tmpfile behind, or whether it doesn't start at all. If it doesn't start at all, this would point to a driver problem inasmuch as there is an issue with initiating the download of a full size RAW file, and then that would indeed be a problem for the gphoto development team. If it, however, downloads the file in part and then aborts along the way, that might suggest to me that the Pi3 hardware can't handle the data influx from the large file and crashes at that point.

Do this with the camera settings at sRAW, mRAW and RAW. According to what you wrote before, sRAW and mRAW files were no problem, so they should complete in this simple test as well, while full RAW images crash the program.

It would be interesting for me to see what happens. I would predict that you will end up with a tmpfile of approximately 35MB when you use full RAW and gphoto gets stuck.

Bonne chance!

Jo
The following user(s) said Thank You: Vincent Groenewold, pask
5 years 11 months ago #24885
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Thank you very much Jo for all these inputs,

Well i am just cooking the dinner (making my head to breath a bit out of gphoto & rpi3 !! loool) - i will look better your inputs in a few...

my morning message was related to the issue i open on GIT regarding gphoto2 in fact, where i attached the debug file.
You can read the exchnage and see the file there : github.com/gphoto/gphoto2/issues/127
(i just recently send a new message with the new debug file...

the "unknow event" is trange but i see them also when it is a success with the jpg. The trouble is after that and after the exposure...

I am right now trying to install a ubuntu astro (astronomy linux distrib) to a hardrive and i will try it on my laptop (to see if the laptop has same issue this would take out the rpi3 possibilty)

hoping Marcus or other people could check from gphoto2 side ..
I will come back to your message later tonight ;)
thank you very much for taking time to look & remember your experiences ;)
5 years 11 months ago #24887

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That's what I was also driving at:



The problem is likely file size related. Since you are using a full frame Canon, your full size RAW files are larger than the images most other Canon users here are dealing with, so they don't encounter the problem.

The tmpfile should then tell you where in the transfer gphoto aborts.

There is another test you could do: Just try to download large full size RAW files from the memory card of your Canon 5D3. If that also fails then this has nothing to do with the capture process per se, but with the file transfer process from the camera to the Pi/?communication speed?.

Here a link to all the relevant gphoto commands:

gphoto.org/doc/manual/ref-gphoto2-cli.html

And here a link to a somewhat older, but still informative, youtube tutorial on communicating with your camera:

The following user(s) said Thank You: pask
5 years 11 months ago #24888
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Muchas gracias otra ves Jo ! :)

So i did many tests .. and the results are ... weird ! .. here the thing :

dev-driver (2.5.15.1 & 2.5.16.1) :
RAW/mRAW/sRAW => Err70 on the camera, and tmpfile=0ko
JPG => OK fully

stab-driver (2.5.15 & 2.6.16)
RAW = blocked at some % like 26% (see file : tmp-RAW-stab-blocked) size 3.1Mo
mRAW = fully ok (see file : tmp-mRAW-stab-OK) size 8.3Mo
sRAW =!!! blocked at some % like 30% (see file :tmp-sRAW-stab-blocked) size 2.6Mo
JPG = fully ok (see file : tmp-JPG-stab-OK) size 655ko

Very strange to see the sRAW doesn't pass !!! And i did the test 3x for each format, and i get the same result each time, with same size of tmpfile !

hope you can see things there ;)

Pask
Last edit: 5 years 11 months ago by pask.
5 years 11 months ago #24895
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OK, I admit defeat! This has got to be a 5D3 specific driver problem.
Jasem always wins.. :-))
But I suspect/hope, this will help the gphoto team to figure out what they need to change in the driver.
Please let us know if you see the same behavior when you test gphoto file transfer on your laptop or if any of the numbers change.
The only thing I still don't understand is that in your previous post you stated that an image was transferred and rendered when you used mRAW and sRAW. Not sure how I can reconcile that with these tests.
Anyway, thanks so much for you extraordinary patience with me. Hopefully these driver issues will be resolved soon.
Best
Jo
Last edit: 5 years 11 months ago by Jose Corazon.
5 years 11 months ago #24897

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Well thank you Jo for your time and explanation!
I learnt a lot about the gphoto lib with this and it's highly appreciable. !!

So you right in mRaw & jpg it was all OK (except with the dev-driver that i found today) -- but honestly i did not try the sRaw before, for me if mraw&jpg were fine the sraw should have beeen also....
But making the full detailed test for the tmpfiles.. i discovered the sraw doesnt pass to the rpi3 ! Strange....

I posted the same results to gphoto issue team.. keeping finger crossed it will give thdm some ideas !

I will keep posted any progress here for the sake of the community and if anybody has the same issue .. (i would love to know if anybody with 5d3 & pi3 get same results btw ..)

Best regards,
Pask
The following user(s) said Thank You: Jose Corazon
5 years 11 months ago #24899

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I have to tell, that i have the same Problem from today on. Worked like a charme since about 5 months, but today the issue began. Cant save file, file is no raw image, everything like discribed in this thread. The only thing i made was a system-update... no way to get a preview...

Cheers Niki


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Skywatcher EQ6-R | Lacerta 10" Carbon-Newton | Lacerta MFoc Motorfocus | Moravian G2 8300 Color | Canon EOS 5DMarkIIIa | Lodestar X2 guiding cam | KSTARS 3.4.3. on my outdoor-Laptop with KDE-Neon/Plasma | KSTARS 3.4.3. on Remote-IMac with Catalina | KSTARS 3.4.3 on Remote-Macbook Air with Catalina
5 years 11 months ago #25072

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5 years 11 months ago #25073

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Hi!

Here is the logfile. The crash is shown on the very end.

also i get the message now "KStars detected INDI driver indi_canon_ccd crashed. Please check INDI server log in the device manager"

Since i am not very firm on Linux, where do i find this Device Manager? So i can check the log...

I have to admit that unlike the other people with this problem, i had no issues at all with my canon 5DMarkIII at all, until yesterday...

Only thing i did was to accept the system update, that was prompted...

EDIT: Tryed around a bit with updates and suggestions from this thread here, so now my camera shows me an "ERROR 70" on the Camera display, and i have to switch it off... Now its not working anymore at all...

The last Logfile is attached



cheers
Niki
Skywatcher EQ6-R | Lacerta 10" Carbon-Newton | Lacerta MFoc Motorfocus | Moravian G2 8300 Color | Canon EOS 5DMarkIIIa | Lodestar X2 guiding cam | KSTARS 3.4.3. on my outdoor-Laptop with KDE-Neon/Plasma | KSTARS 3.4.3. on Remote-IMac with Catalina | KSTARS 3.4.3 on Remote-Macbook Air with Catalina
Last edit: 5 years 11 months ago by the.cakemaker.
5 years 11 months ago #25076
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In the Menu select Tools>Devices>Device Manager>CCDs>CanonDSLR

Out of curiosity: Does the file transfer work when you select FITS format instead of Native?
Last edit: 5 years 11 months ago by Jose Corazon. Reason: Afterthought
5 years 11 months ago #25078

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I have to check that later... Did it yesterday, there it was of no use...
After the updates of the system i made today, Sudo apt-get update and Sudo apt-get upgrade, the cam is crashing with a crash report on the cameras screen, which is totally new...

Tryed the things Jasem wrote on the first page too, and now it seems to me i messed the whole thing totally up...

Maybe you guys have a suggestion for me, for a total new installation? ATM i use Lubuntu, on a dedicated machine just for controlling the whole thing, i wouldn´t mind to install another distribution if someone thinks that could help. But i would not know what...

EDIT: Tried to change to FITS in the Options, but that did not change anithng...
Skywatcher EQ6-R | Lacerta 10" Carbon-Newton | Lacerta MFoc Motorfocus | Moravian G2 8300 Color | Canon EOS 5DMarkIIIa | Lodestar X2 guiding cam | KSTARS 3.4.3. on my outdoor-Laptop with KDE-Neon/Plasma | KSTARS 3.4.3. on Remote-IMac with Catalina | KSTARS 3.4.3 on Remote-Macbook Air with Catalina
Last edit: 5 years 11 months ago by the.cakemaker.
5 years 11 months ago #25080

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FYI I just tried this with my laptop and rpi3 which both run Ubuntu Mate 16.04 with Jasem’s ppas for KStars and libgphoto. Ekos let’s my Canon EOS 700D DSLR camera happily take pictures without any problems. Both are fully updated to the latest versions of all software. And both are very recent installations. As a matter of fact, I had to run the wizard when I started Ekos on my laptop since apparently I hadn’t done that before. Come to think of it, the config files on the rpi3 are older since I store them on a USB stick and have been using that for a few weeks now.
Last edit: 5 years 11 months ago by Wouter van Reeven.
5 years 11 months ago #25090

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