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ZWO Drivers and Rasperry PI 4 for ALL SKY Getting started questions

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Hi All,

I am new here and glad to be here. :) I hope this is the right thread to post these initial questions. But anyway this is what I am up to and confused about.

I have been imaging with ZWO cameras from my Win 10 machine for a few years now. I do DSO , Lunar and Planetary. Recently I have been itching to get involved with building a meteor All Sky setup with a ZWO camera.

So I read up on some stuff and saw the Rasberry Pi 4. It seemed to fit what I wanted to do so I purchased it and just got it today. I plan on building a weatherproof box with it inside and having one of my ZWO cameras in it pretty much all the time. Now I got 3 ZWO's but only 2 would be good for my ALL SKY project. The ZWO 385mc and ZWO 290mm (Regular non mini). I use them for my imaging and only want to put them in the box I make for special occasions like media showers.

So I plan on picking up a new/used ZWO for the ALL SKY running all night or if anyone has any other ccd/cmos recomendation.

Now I tinkered around with my Rasberry PI 4 tonight and had Rasberian OS on it. I ran into some snags. and here are my questions and hoping that someone can point me in the right direction :)

I was able to get Fire Capture working, but it would not recognize my ZWO385mc. I tried downloading and installing the indi drivers from ZWO site and it appeared the were installed properly but still no camera recognized and tried mulitple 3.0 cables.

So before I ramble on to much, I guess I should state my first Main Goal I wish to accomplish

My Goal is to stream live sky images from my homemade All Sky Setup to my home network and have them viewable on my website or youtube channel. The website part I can manage, but it is just the software and drivers to get my Rasberry PI 4 to start capturing with the ZWO.

So with that said What OS and Software & indi drivers should I be using with the Raspberry PI 4?

Thanks in advanced

:)
Telescopes:Celestron C11 SCT, Astro-Tech 8" RC, Skywatcher APO Equinox ED80 500mm Refractor @ F/6.25 Mounts: Skywatcher EQ6-R Pro Guide Scope: Orion 50mm Deluxe Barlows: AntaresXTL 1.5x, GSO 2x Shorty Cameras: ZWO 1600mm-P, ZWO385mc, ZWO 290mm. Imaging Computers: i5 Laptop and Rasberry Pi 4 4gb.
The following user(s) said Thank You: Jasem Mutlaq
3 years 9 months ago #55140

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With a RPi4 running Raspbian I suggest using the AstroPi3 scripts to install indi and Kstars.
Download the script (git clone from the repository) and run the setupAstroRaspbianPi.sh script.
It will set your system to a good state with useful enhancements and install KStars and Indi with their dependencies.
My experience is that it just works.

Other solutions seem to me to require far more fiddling and configuring.

Chris
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3 years 9 months ago #55143

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Thank You Chirs :)

I will try that with a fresh install of Raspian.
Telescopes:Celestron C11 SCT, Astro-Tech 8" RC, Skywatcher APO Equinox ED80 500mm Refractor @ F/6.25 Mounts: Skywatcher EQ6-R Pro Guide Scope: Orion 50mm Deluxe Barlows: AntaresXTL 1.5x, GSO 2x Shorty Cameras: ZWO 1600mm-P, ZWO385mc, ZWO 290mm. Imaging Computers: i5 Laptop and Rasberry Pi 4 4gb.
3 years 9 months ago #55161

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I have been using this ready made package for my allsky camera for the past three and some years: github.com/thomasjacquin/allsky

It has both day and night time capturing with different parameters and can generate timelapse, star trails image and keogram every morning and upload them to my server.
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3 years 9 months ago #55174

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Thanks Jpaana,

With that do I still install Astro PI3 scripts?
Telescopes:Celestron C11 SCT, Astro-Tech 8" RC, Skywatcher APO Equinox ED80 500mm Refractor @ F/6.25 Mounts: Skywatcher EQ6-R Pro Guide Scope: Orion 50mm Deluxe Barlows: AntaresXTL 1.5x, GSO 2x Shorty Cameras: ZWO 1600mm-P, ZWO385mc, ZWO 290mm. Imaging Computers: i5 Laptop and Rasberry Pi 4 4gb.
Last edit: 3 years 9 months ago by Brian.
3 years 9 months ago #55210

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Not for this, this is a completely standalone project, you should have standard Raspbian buster installation and just run the install.sh script which installs some dependencies, compiles and installs the software and makes it run automatically on boot. There is also a script in gui/install.sh to install the web gui that makes it easier to configure and shows the live view and archives.
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3 years 9 months ago #55215

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Oh Cool, I checked it out and that is exactly what I want to do. I see the cameras tested, now I plan on running a new/used ZWO either the 120mm or 224mc, but also may pop in my 385mc at least to test it out and get it working. Also I just did a clean install of Raspian from there download page. Got to check if it is buster. I am also using a 64gb card

With that said what would be the best camera for this application. My budget is around $250 . As I will be using my other ZWO cams for imaging while that is running.

Thanks Again :)
Telescopes:Celestron C11 SCT, Astro-Tech 8" RC, Skywatcher APO Equinox ED80 500mm Refractor @ F/6.25 Mounts: Skywatcher EQ6-R Pro Guide Scope: Orion 50mm Deluxe Barlows: AntaresXTL 1.5x, GSO 2x Shorty Cameras: ZWO 1600mm-P, ZWO385mc, ZWO 290mm. Imaging Computers: i5 Laptop and Rasberry Pi 4 4gb.
3 years 9 months ago #55217

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The standard Raspbian currently is buster, older ones don't support Pi 4 so you most probably have it so it's good to go. I've used 120MM-S and 178MC, hard to say which one is better. Mono camera is more sensitive, so it's easier to spot clouds, which is what I mostly use it for as it's monitoring my remote observatory. Color camera has its own charm as the images look nicer. Also depends on the lens you are going to use. Currently I have the mono camera installed with a 180 degree fish-eye. The 120MM-S, or MC-S if you want color, both fit in your budget, probably with a wider lens too. The standard lens for 120 is quite wide, about 150 degrees, but doesn't quite cover horizon at my site so I got this one for it www.aliexpress.com/item/32911136144.html Stock lens for 178 is a bit wider, but doesn't give quite 180 degrees view either.
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3 years 9 months ago #55223

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Thanks again,

Right now I am at teh part that says "Use of allsky on non-ARM platforms is unsupported (there isn't yet an easy, portable installer) but should be possible. Have a look at install.sh to see what needs to be done. Additionally, you'll need to download the SDK.

Now, run the install script:" Do I need the SDK from ZWO? This was where I ran into a problem when trying to connect before or does teh script by Thomas do this for you?

:)
Telescopes:Celestron C11 SCT, Astro-Tech 8" RC, Skywatcher APO Equinox ED80 500mm Refractor @ F/6.25 Mounts: Skywatcher EQ6-R Pro Guide Scope: Orion 50mm Deluxe Barlows: AntaresXTL 1.5x, GSO 2x Shorty Cameras: ZWO 1600mm-P, ZWO385mc, ZWO 290mm. Imaging Computers: i5 Laptop and Rasberry Pi 4 4gb.
3 years 9 months ago #55224

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ZWO camera SDK is included in the allsky repo, so you don't need to download it separately, but only for ARM platforms which is why the warning is there. It should compile quite easily to other platforms too, but requires the ZWO SDK libraries and some modifications to the Makefile. Testing has been only done on Raspbian so anything else is wild west territory :)
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3 years 9 months ago #55267

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Thx Jpaana, I think I finally got it working. Was able to view camera in GUI mode through IP address. Only issue Im having when I tried to use t terminal and go to the config.sh to change settings,, no settings would show. I was trying set the upload settings to true for everything. I ended up just doing a reinstall so there set now. But I did read that the directory would change when you put it in GUI. But I have no trouble with the settings in GUI mode

Also the next thing I am doing is putting a fan on my factory pi case, it was running at 85c lol. Then read an article on how the fan helps a lot.

Now the next thing I want to do is to hook it up to my website. So trying to learn that. :) I'm away for biz till Wednesday andby then hopefully all my parts arrived :)

Thanks again :)
Telescopes:Celestron C11 SCT, Astro-Tech 8" RC, Skywatcher APO Equinox ED80 500mm Refractor @ F/6.25 Mounts: Skywatcher EQ6-R Pro Guide Scope: Orion 50mm Deluxe Barlows: AntaresXTL 1.5x, GSO 2x Shorty Cameras: ZWO 1600mm-P, ZWO385mc, ZWO 290mm. Imaging Computers: i5 Laptop and Rasberry Pi 4 4gb.
3 years 9 months ago #55270

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Good to hear you got it working. Yes, the settings are a bit spread around due to the way the system works. There is a main capture program (naturally called "capture" :) what is started by allsky.sh when the service is started. Capture then runs various shell scrips in /home/pi/allsky/scripts directory after each capture, at end of night and so on.

Main configuration file with paths to the others and options for shell scripts are in /home/pi/allsky/config.sh which you found. Camera settings and other parameters to the main capture program are in /etc/raspap/settings.json by default which is what the web gui modifies, the path is set in config.sh as well. Third file is /home/pi/allsky/scripts/ftp-settings.sh with settings for user name, password and so on used for uploading the files to remote server.

Unfortunately the installation location is hard coded in quite a few of the shell scripts so it's easiest to keep the install directory as /home/pi/allsky. Many of the options also require restarting the allsky service (sudo systemctl restart allsky or reboot of the Pi) to take effect as it only reads the configuration files once. So in case some change in options doesn't seem to have effect, reboot first before wondering about it more :)
The following user(s) said Thank You: Brian
3 years 9 months ago #55323

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