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

Bi-monthly release with minor bug fixes and improvements

Astroberry w/ ASI462MC

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Hi everyone! This is my first post here so I hope I'm in the right place to talk about my issues.


I've just recently got my first astro camera (ZWO ASI462MC) and I installed the latest Astroberry build on a fresh RPI4 with the master plan being to get into guiding and do some planetary work. So far so good, I can use VNC and the browser to access it. Some of the built-in applications work fine "out of the box", but sadly not the ones I'd like to use for planetary imaging. Please bear with me for a sec while I explain.


+ Indi server with zwo_ccd driver starts fine, Kstars/Ekos work and I can use the 462MC. Apparently all functionality is there but for simple planetary images/videos, I'd need a much simpler tool.
+CCDCiel also works - same here, played with it, not fan, it's not stable, I'd like to use something else.

- OACapture seems interesting except it won't work with this camera. It sees it in the device list but when I select it, nothing happens. If I start it via CLI, I just get "unrecognized device". Is the 462 too new for this? OAcapture version shows 1.8, I can't even find it on their website, I only see 1.7 there. How can this be?

-FireCapture looks promising but of course it also won't recognize the camera. I tried to start it with and without indi server running with no success. This really is strange as FireCapture on my Windows 10 machine works with this camera, this would indicate that is maybe a driver issue?

I've been reading about something called Planetary Imager. It seems ideal, simple, has all settings, except there is no prepared ARM build for RPI and their instructions to build it manually are too "minimal" for me to make sense. I would love some help getting this working.

ASICAP would be cool but it is out of the question, apparently they don't have any support for RPI.


Any help getting the FireCapture, OACapture or Planetary Imager to work is greatly appreciated. Also any tips on other capture software out there which would work on Astroberry with the ASI462MC. Anything similar to Astrophotography Tool maybe?

This is an example of FireCapture not seeing the camera:



Thank you!
Last edit: 3 years 6 months ago by victor. Reason: grammar, formatting
3 years 6 months ago #59763
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Replied by victor on topic Astroberry w/ ASI462MC

I guess no one is using this camera with Astroberry yet :(

It does work great, I've taken it out for a spin with a windows laptop and it's awesome with FireCapture. I hope one day I'll get it working on the RPI too.
3 years 6 months ago #59972

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Replied by Tim Roske on topic Astroberry w/ ASI462MC

I have the ASI462MC. I have not tried it on Astroberry. I have it working in Windows 10. But at first I could not get it to work in Firecapture 2.6 in Windows 10. It turns new Firecapture 2.7 beta has the latest ZWO drivers integrated into the program. It works fine with the 462. An alternate solution listed in another forum is to replace the driver or SDK in the Firecapture 2.6 folder with the newest one from ZWO. Can’t remember the details.

I don’t know if this new 2.7 version is available for the pi. I don’t know if the pi version has the drivers integrated into the program where you could swap in the latest INDI version. But it is something you might want to look into.

Tim
Last edit: 3 years 6 months ago by Tim Roske. Reason: Clarification
3 years 6 months ago #59977

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Replied by victor on topic Astroberry w/ ASI462MC

I've read about this and I think the currently available 2.6 windows kit from their website is updated as well. I just installed the 2.6 in windows 10 and it worked with the camera.

Sadly no, 2.7 beta is not yet available for the RPI.
3 years 6 months ago #60015

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Replied by randomic on topic Astroberry w/ ASI462MC

Got this camera a couple of days ago and have no end of issues trying to get it to play nice on a raspberry pi 3b

In ocapture I see `(ZWASI2)` in the camera menu when it's connected, however on clicking it gives the error "Unable to connect camera"
In firecapture I click "ZWO" and get "The selected camera could not be started"

I've managed to get images from it in phd2 (although obviously that's no use for capturing planetary footage).
I've managed to get images from it in kstars.


However, here's the biggest issue I have. If I try to stream video from the camera in kstars, I can do so successfully at about 0.25s per frame.
Soon after I lower the exposure time below about 0.2s (and therefore ~5fps framerate) the raspberry pi hardlocks

VNC disconnects, the clock stops ticking, any watch commands in terminals start segfaulting, ssh stops responding. I get a bunch of kernel "oops" messages from running processes.

This consistently happens within a few seconds of starting the video stream.

I've read some topics around pi zeros having issues with video streaming that suggest it can be fixed by setting over_voltage=4. However, I've set it as high as 6 and seen no effect. I've also tried underclocking the cpu.


I wonder if maybe the camera is drawing far too much power. The manual for the ASI462MC says that the maximum power usage is 13.9W (!!!). Which is close to 3A at 5V. I find this incredibly hard to believe as even cooled cameras do not use this much with the cooler running. Plus USB2 spec only provides ~500mA and even USB3 only provides ~900mA.

Any ideas what could be going on here? I've attached some backtraces from `/var/log/kern.log`.

Is there any way I can roll back the libASICamera2.so to see if this is a new issue with the SDK?

I don't have any other ZWO cameras but I've tested video streaming with a logitech c920 using the indi_webcam driver and that seems to work fine (albeit with nearly maxed cpu).
3 years 5 months ago #61743
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Replied by randomic on topic Astroberry w/ ASI462MC

I wrote a reply to this thread but for some reason it didn't post. It did post, my bad
Last edit: 3 years 5 months ago by randomic. Reason: snip duplicate info
3 years 5 months ago #61754
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Replied by randomic on topic Astroberry w/ ASI462MC

I put the same SD card into my Raspberry Pi 1 to see if the problem was hardware related. Although the poor hardware could barely run astroberry, it didn't lock up in the same way the Pi 3B did.

I guess that means that my specific problem is not a software problem. I'll look in to getting a Pi 4 and hope for more success! I'll post an update here with my Pi 4 experience.
3 years 5 months ago #61787

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Replied by randomic on topic Astroberry w/ ASI462MC

Another update. I connected the camera via an independently powered USB hub and the lock up still occurred. I think this rules out power problems.
3 years 5 months ago #61790

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Replied by randomic on topic Astroberry w/ ASI462MC

Just to let anyone finding this thread know. My problem does not occur with a Raspberry Pi 4.

Additionally, the creator of oacapture is including the new SDK in the next release. So it should be usable with this camera in all versions after 1.8.0
3 years 4 months ago #61938

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Replied by Markus on topic Astroberry w/ ASI462MC

I have the same issue with astroberry on a Pi 4 with oacapture and Firecapture: the ASI462MC cannot be connected.

With KStars and Ekos/Indi the ASI462MC is recognized and works...
3 years 3 months ago #63442

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Replied by Adrian on topic Astroberry w/ ASI462MC

Just tried this with astro berry on a pi 4 .

Works with Kstars ekos Indi.

Works with oacapture. I set autobandwidth for usb. Also output as set and select a location for output.
Frames per second bit disappointing, maybe because I am running a sata drive on the other usb3 port.

Camera not recognised by firecapture.
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3 years 2 months ago #64841

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Recently I’ve been working with Torsten to give support to Firecapture on Raspeberry. Please, could you download and try the 2.7 beta 2?. I’ve made it works with the QHY5III462C that’s uses the same sensor.
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3 years 2 months ago #64842

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