Hey everyone,

I'm a bit stuck... I have a Nikon D5000 as my main imaging camera, I can get it to connect to INDI on the main USB lead but it requires a separate lead for the shutter release. I have the KMtronics USB relay board which has been working fine on APT on my windows machine but I am wanting to transition to Kstars/EKOS for everything.

My issue is that I can't seem to get it to connect to the shutter release.... It worked once a while ago so I know it's possible but for some reason it doesn't work anymore

I have checked I am looking at the right usb device and have /dev/ttyUSB1 set in the port before connecting to the camera but no luck so far

Does anyone have any ideas that may help me?

Thanks in advance

device nodes like /dev/ttyUSBX change on reboot .. are you sure it's not /dev/ttyUSB0 now ? have you tried that?

The best thing is to is to permanently assign a port to this so you don't need to worry about it. You can either do this manually or use something like StellarMate Serial Port Assistant tool.

Don’t feel like you’re alone. My Canon T7i connects but can’t image. Indi can’t control the shutter, for one thing.

I check the port each time by running ls -al /dev/ttyUSB* and then plugging it in and listing again to see which one it comes up as.

The frustrating thing is I made it work once, literally for one test shot and i haven't managed to get it to work since I know it's possible! Just got to find out how haha

When you’re testing is your Nikon in manual mode? Power save features off? Wifi Off? Maybe try turning every do-dad off.

As an aside I got tired of these issues not being fixed because there is no real support for these freeware products. I just bought an AsiAir for $178. WIthin hours it was up an running - very easy, BUT my Canon T71 would not work, just like it still doesn’t work in Ekos. ZWO had that fixed withing 48 hours in a beta version and new firmware

So here’s the deal. I’m told AsiAir is built on Ekos. My Canon T7i wasn’t support in the last AsiAir build. Now it is. The old ZWO support list that originally showed my T7i was not support also shows your Nikon D5000 as NOT supported which makes me wonder that your and my DSLR problems with Ekos result from - the cameras are not actually supported.

As an aside my Canon with the new AsiAir build now works BUT it still does NOT work in Ekos. I got remote control from my iPad, guiding, imaging, Safari GOTO, and plate solution for $178 bucks tho I had a ZWO guide camera. It was all very easy to setup AND it has Support from the manufacturor.

Yep, always in manual mode, there is no Wifi on it so thats fine, I've not tried the powersave features so will give that a go now I've got the external power supply for it

I'm starting to feel the same way... I've seen it work once though so I know it's possible unless that was a bug and it's since been removed haha.

It's very tempting to get the ASI Air or Stellarmate.. I plan to upgrade my nikon to the ASI16000MM in the future so it's good to know that there could be a way to get it to work on that if I buy the ASIAir earlier than the camera...

Thanks

Since I have a Mac and two USB ports I thought the AsiAir would be an inexpense test rather than put a more money into some other ‘cpu box’. For me it solved a lot of problems

Well I've asked in the ASIAir fb group and they have basically said it's not supported and not even offered to look into it so it doesn't fill me with confidence that if I bought it they would get it working for me... Gonna stick with Astroberry for now and keep trying to get it to work. I can trigger the shutter with a shell script but still cant get EKOS to do it for me

I've got a test script that activates the shutter with the following code...

Open shutter is echo -e "\xFF\x01\x01" > dev/ttyUSB0

close shutter is echo -e "\xFF\x01\x00" > dev/ttyUSB0

Is it possible to get EKOS to send this out to activate the shutter relay board...?

I wouldn’t take some FB or forum’s word for it based on my experiences here and the PhD2 forum. One can write Zwo directly at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. and/or This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

To be clear, your saying PC command-line to camera works, but how to make Ekos issue commandline scripts? I don’t know about Ekos. I only have its guiding module working but w/o a camera working one can’t get more of Ekos to work, so no help on my end.

.... but doesn’t Nikon have a utulity? With my testing. I knew the camera was working cuz my Canon util and anoth guiding app worked. Besides command-line control do other apps on you PC control the camera?

Good plan, I'll drop them an email, thanks.

I am currently using an old PC laptop to control everything through APT Astrophotography Tool & PHD2. It works for the camera, mount & guide camera with no additional scripts.

I am trying to lighten the load by moving to a Raspberry pi running kstars/EKOS etc but this is the stumbling block...

So far I know I can control the shutter using a script so it works with this setup, it's just a case of getting EKOS/INDI to send the right 1's & 0's to the relay board to get it to work...