Hi. First post on the forum, unfortunately it's to ask for some help...

Firstly though, huge thanks to the developers for this software and especially to Jasem for the RPi functionality. I'm strictly an end user, no coding skills whatsoever and only a newly aquired ability with Linux based OS's...However, thanks to the tutorials and guidance I found I now have an old laptop running Linux Mint 16, Kstars-bleeding installed and controlling my RPi (via wifi), which is connected to a Synscan ALT-AZ mount, Nikon D3100 as my main CCD and a webcam connected via the indi_V4L_generic drivers as a basic autoguider/guidescope viewer. It's pretty awesome, even if I've not had any clear sky to really try it out...

So here's my question. I would like to swap the webcam for the raspberry pi NoIR camera board. EKOS reckonises the camera and can connect to it, but as soon as I click 'Stream on' or try to aquire an image off it, the camera goes off-line (i.e. the light on the camera board switches off and no image/stream outputted).

I've attached the terminal window output with a few comments of what I was doing at each point, hopefully someone here can make more sense of it that me and point me in the right direction? I'm pretty sure it's not hardware related, as I can confirm that I can get a image from the camera board using V4L...

K-stars-bleeding and libindi are all upto date as well.

Thanks in advance, please let me know if you want to know any thing about my set-up.
Cheers.
Bob.

It looks like I can't attach the text file of the terminal output, so here it is...

login as: pi
pi@10.10.5.1's password:
Linux raspberrypi 3.10.25+ #622 PREEMPT Fri Jan 3 18:41:00 GMT 2014 armv6l

The programs included with the Debian GNU/Linux system are free software;
the exact distribution terms for each program are described in the
individual files in /usr/share/doc/*/copyright.

Debian GNU/Linux comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY, to the extent
permitted by applicable law.
Last login: Tue Mar 18 01:19:46 2014 from 10.10.5.151

>>starting INDI server on the RPi, only running the indi_v4l_generic driver for simplicity

pi@raspberrypi ~ $ indiserver -v -m 100 indi_v4l_generic
2014-03-18T01:24:49: startup: indiserver -v -m 100 indi_v4l_generic
2014-03-18T01:24:49: Driver indi_v4l_generic: pid=2471 rfd=3 wfd=6 efd=7
2014-03-18T01:24:49: listening to port 7624 on fd 4

>>Start K-Stars_bleeding, connect to the remote server.

2014-03-18T01:24:58: Client 0: new arrival from 10.10.5.151:50970 - welcome!

>>Connect to the Camera from the control panel

2014-03-18T01:25:27: Driver indi_v4l_generic: Driver raspicam (version 0.0.0)
2014-03-18T01:25:27: Driver indi_v4l_generic: card; Camera Board OV5647
2014-03-18T01:25:27: Driver indi_v4l_generic: bus; CSI
2014-03-18T01:25:27: Driver indi_v4l_generic: Driver capabilities:
2014-03-18T01:25:27: Driver indi_v4l_generic: V4L2_CAP_VIDEO_CAPTURE
2014-03-18T01:25:27: Driver indi_v4l_generic: V4L2_CAP_READWRITE
2014-03-18T01:25:27: Driver indi_v4l_generic: V4L2_CAP_STREAMING
2014-03-18T01:25:27: Driver indi_v4l_generic: Available Inputs:
2014-03-18T01:25:27: Driver indi_v4l_generic: 0. default (type Composite/S-Video)
2014-03-18T01:25:27: Driver indi_v4l_generic: Current Video input: 0
2014-03-18T01:25:27: Driver indi_v4l_generic: VIDIOC_CROPCAP: Invalid argument
2014-03-18T01:25:27: Driver indi_v4l_generic: Available Capture Image formats:
2014-03-18T01:25:27: Driver indi_v4l_generic: 0. MJPEG (MJPG)
2014-03-18T01:25:27: Driver indi_v4l_generic: Available Frame sizes/rates for this format:
2014-03-18T01:25:27: Driver indi_v4l_generic: (Stepwise) min. width 64, max. width 1920 step width 8
2014-03-18T01:25:27: Driver indi_v4l_generic: (Stepwise) min. height 64, max. height 1080 step height 8,
2014-03-18T01:25:27: Driver indi_v4l_generic: Frame intervals:VIDIOC_ENUM_FRAMEINTERVALS: Invalid argument
2014-03-18T01:25:27: Driver indi_v4l_generic: Unknown Frame rate type: 0
2014-03-18T01:25:27: Driver indi_v4l_generic:
2014-03-18T01:25:27: Driver indi_v4l_generic: 1. JPEG (JPEG)
2014-03-18T01:25:27: Driver indi_v4l_generic: Available Frame sizes/rates for this format:
2014-03-18T01:25:27: Driver indi_v4l_generic: (Stepwise) min. width 64, max. width 2592 step width 8
2014-03-18T01:25:27: Driver indi_v4l_generic: (Stepwise) min. height 64, max. height 1952 step height 8,
2014-03-18T01:25:27: Driver indi_v4l_generic: Frame intervals:VIDIOC_ENUM_FRAMEINTERVALS: Invalid argument
2014-03-18T01:25:27: Driver indi_v4l_generic: Unknown Frame rate type: 0
2014-03-18T01:25:27: Driver indi_v4l_generic:
2014-03-18T01:25:27: Driver indi_v4l_generic: 2. H264 (H264)
2014-03-18T01:25:27: Driver indi_v4l_generic: Available Frame sizes/rates for this format:
2014-03-18T01:25:27: Driver indi_v4l_generic: (Stepwise) min. width 64, max. width 1920 step width 8
2014-03-18T01:25:27: Driver indi_v4l_generic: (Stepwise) min. height 64, max. height 1080 step height 8,
2014-03-18T01:25:27: Driver indi_v4l_generic: Frame intervals:VIDIOC_ENUM_FRAMEINTERVALS: Invalid argument
2014-03-18T01:25:27: Driver indi_v4l_generic: Unknown Frame rate type: 0
2014-03-18T01:25:27: Driver indi_v4l_generic:
2014-03-18T01:25:27: Driver indi_v4l_generic: 3. YUV 4:2:0 (YU12)
2014-03-18T01:25:27: Driver indi_v4l_generic: Available Frame sizes/rates for this format:
2014-03-18T01:25:27: Driver indi_v4l_generic: (Stepwise) min. width 64, max. width 2592 step width 32
2014-03-18T01:25:27: Driver indi_v4l_generic: (Stepwise) min. height 64, max. height 1952 step height 16,
2014-03-18T01:25:27: Driver indi_v4l_generic: Frame intervals:VIDIOC_ENUM_FRAMEINTERVALS: Invalid argument
2014-03-18T01:25:27: Driver indi_v4l_generic: Unknown Frame rate type: 0
2014-03-18T01:25:27: Driver indi_v4l_generic:
2014-03-18T01:25:27: Driver indi_v4l_generic: 4. RGBA (RGB4)
2014-03-18T01:25:27: Driver indi_v4l_generic: Available Frame sizes/rates for this format:
2014-03-18T01:25:27: Driver indi_v4l_generic: (Stepwise) min. width 64, max. width 2592 step width 32
2014-03-18T01:25:27: Driver indi_v4l_generic: (Stepwise) min. height 64, max. height 1952 step height 16,
2014-03-18T01:25:27: Driver indi_v4l_generic: Frame intervals:VIDIOC_ENUM_FRAMEINTERVALS: Invalid argument
2014-03-18T01:25:27: Driver indi_v4l_generic: Unknown Frame rate type: 0
2014-03-18T01:25:27: Driver indi_v4l_generic:
2014-03-18T01:25:27: Driver indi_v4l_generic: 5. BGRA (BGR4)
2014-03-18T01:25:27: Driver indi_v4l_generic: Available Frame sizes/rates for this format:
2014-03-18T01:25:27: Driver indi_v4l_generic: (Stepwise) min. width 64, max. width 2592 step width 32
2014-03-18T01:25:27: Driver indi_v4l_generic: (Stepwise) min. height 64, max. height 1952 step height 16,
2014-03-18T01:25:27: Driver indi_v4l_generic: Frame intervals:VIDIOC_ENUM_FRAMEINTERVALS: Invalid argument
2014-03-18T01:25:27: Driver indi_v4l_generic: Unknown Frame rate type: 0
2014-03-18T01:25:27: Driver indi_v4l_generic:
2014-03-18T01:25:27: Driver indi_v4l_generic: 6. RGB565 (RGBP)
2014-03-18T01:25:27: Driver indi_v4l_generic: Available Frame sizes/rates fo
2014-03-18T01:25:27: Driver indi_v4l_generic: (Stepwise) min. width 64, max
2014-03-18T01:25:27: Driver indi_v4l_generic: (Stepwise) min. height 64, ma
2014-03-18T01:25:27: Driver indi_v4l_generic: Frame intervals:VIDIOC_ENUM_
2014-03-18T01:25:27: Driver indi_v4l_generic: Unknown Frame rate type: 0
2014-03-18T01:25:27: Driver indi_v4l_generic:
2014-03-18T01:25:27: Driver indi_v4l_generic: width: 160 - height: 120
2014-03-18T01:25:27: Driver indi_v4l_generic: pixel format: V4L2_PIX_FMT_MJPEG
2014-03-18T01:25:27: Driver indi_v4l_generic: V4L2 Check: All successful, return
2014-03-18T01:25:27: Driver indi_v4l_generic: V4L Device is online. Retrieving b
2014-03-18T01:25:27: Driver indi_v4l_generic: brightness -- min: 0 max: 100 step
2014-03-18T01:25:27: Driver indi_v4l_generic: contrast -- min: -100 max: 100 ste
2014-03-18T01:25:27: Driver indi_v4l_generic: saturation -- min: -100 max: 100 s
2014-03-18T01:25:27: Driver indi_v4l_generic: sharpness -- min: -100 max: 100 st

>>So far so good, but here's where I click 'Stream On'

2014-03-18T01:25:44: Driver indi_v4l_generic: VIDIOC_STREAMOFF error 5, Input/ou
2014-03-18T01:25:44: Driver indi_v4l_generic: Starting the video stream.
2014-03-18T01:25:44: Driver indi_v4l_generic: stdin EOF
2014-03-18T01:25:44: Driver indi_v4l_generic: restart #1
2014-03-18T01:25:44: Driver indi_v4l_generic: pid=2477 rfd=3 wfd=7 efd=8
^C

Can you try changing format from MJPEG to JPEG and just do capture, no streaming ?

I've drawn a blank on how to change the format. Is this done within EKOS? On the CCD tab in the control panel the pulldown menu for 'Type' is greyed out.

Sorry, like I said, I'm a total Noob at all this, but I'm a quick study - I'm not expecting to be spoon fed how to do this (that's no fun) but you may need to spell it out a bit more.

[EDIT] I've managed to change the pixel format using v4l2-ctl, but only to YUV. Which works! Both for image only AND streaming! Happy days.

Command was
v4l2-ctl --set-fmt-video=width=640,height=480,pixelformat=YU12

If I try to change the output to JPEG (v4l2-ctl --set-fmt-video=width=640,height=480,pixelformat=JPEG) the reported output format is still MJPEG
2014-03-22T14:34:05: Driver indi_v4l_generic: pixel format: V4L2_PIX_FMT_MJPEG

All other available formats appear to be unsupported...

I'll continue to fiddle with settings and see what I can get...

You should be able to change to YUV using the INDI Control Panel, but you said the drop down list was greyed out? This is not possible in INDI, can you post a screenshot?

Here you go...


Thanks for your help!

I meant in INDI Control Panel, not Ekos. There should be a tab where you can change the capture format.

Oops! My bad..

Here's the control panel tabs.

Sorry, my bad. I just noticed you are using indi_v4l_generic. This is the OLD V4L driver, the new one is indi_v4l2_ccd. Please use that one. I will remove the old ones now.

No bad on your part. I'll try the new drivers now. Thanks!

Just had 5 minutes with it - the functionality of the new driver is awesome! Great job!

I'm heading out soon, but will have a bit more time with it tomorrow. Again, thanks for your help

Cheers!
Bob.

I got my Pi NoIR camera today and had been wondering if it would work with INDI Library. I found this thread and got my answer! Jasem, have you tried the Pi NoIR for autoguiding yet and if so, how does it work? I think this week I will machine a new case to hold the Raspberry Pi, with a 1-1/4" tube to hold the Pi NoIR camera.

I have to say - kStars with Ekos and INDI Library is quite an amazing suite of software. Thank You to everyone who is involved with kStars and Indi library. Jasem, I have watched most of your videos and I'm just amazed at the work you and all the others have done with this over the past year! Really impressive work.

I don't really have a decent astrophotography setup yet, just an old LXD75 mount with an AutoStar II and a Celestron C6 telescope is about it. I've been trying webcams for autoguiding but if the Pi NoIR will work, that would be great.

This software is going to be solely responsible for me spending money this year on a new mount, focuser, ccd camera, and a new 8" RC telescope (I live in San Diego, Ca so going to big would be pointless)