Since the current Pentax (gphoto2) driver in Indi is almost entirely useless (at least for my camera), I've been working on a new Pentax driver using the Ricoh Camera SDK. I think I'm at a point where it's ready for testing.
Here's the highlights:
- The SDK *officially* supports the Pentax K-1, Pentax K-1 Mark II, Pentax KP, and Pentax 645Z. However, it also supports other unlisted cameras, such as the Pentax K-70 I have been testing with. Please let me know if it works for other models as well.
- The camera must be in PTP mode (i.e. opposite of gphoto2).
- Live View works, at least for the K-70.
- Driver supports whatever pre-defined shutter speeds, ISO settings, etc. are available in your current Exposure Program (so typically set to Manual).
- Allows selection of image resolution (by changing the quality).
- Bulb mode does not work, at least not for the K-70. So the maximum exposure is 30 seconds.
Code is in my fork:
github.com/karlrees/indi-3rdparty
The driver is indi-pentax, and you need to build/install libpentax as well. This is my first original driver for Indi, and quite frankly the most coding I've done in a long time. So I'm bound to be doing something wrong, and I appreciate any feedback.
Also, I'm curious to see what the demand is for bringing in pktriggercord into the mix. The basic idea is that the driver would use the Ricoh SDK if the camera is in PTP mode, and switch to pktriggercord when the camera is in MSC. The main advantages to the pktriggercord mode would be (theoretically): 1) bulb mode / arbitrary exposure length support; and 2) possibly wider camera support. However, pktriggercord does not support live view, and from my initial testing appears to be somewhat slower and perhaps a bit less reliable.
Karl