INDI Library - Recently Added Listings - Cameras https://indilib.org/ Fri, 29 Mar 2024 11:05:03 +0100 FeedCreator 1.7.3 Bresser https://indilib.org/individuals/devices/cameras/bresser.html ]]> naheedsa Sun, 19 Nov 2023 09:51:57 +0100 https://indilib.org/individuals/devices/cameras/bresser.html Atik GP https://indilib.org/individuals/devices/cameras/atik-gp.html ]]> naheedsa Sun, 19 Nov 2023 09:08:40 +0100 https://indilib.org/individuals/devices/cameras/atik-gp.html FireFly MV https://indilib.org/individuals/devices/cameras/firefly-mv.html ]]> naheedsa Sun, 19 Nov 2023 09:05:47 +0100 https://indilib.org/individuals/devices/cameras/firefly-mv.html Starfish CCD https://indilib.org/individuals/devices/cameras/starfish-ccd.html ]]> naheedsa Sun, 19 Nov 2023 08:58:25 +0100 https://indilib.org/individuals/devices/cameras/starfish-ccd.html iNova PLX https://indilib.org/individuals/devices/cameras/inova-plx.html ]]> naheedsa Sun, 19 Nov 2023 08:14:25 +0100 https://indilib.org/individuals/devices/cameras/inova-plx.html Mallincam https://indilib.org/individuals/devices/cameras/mallincam.html ]]> naheedsa Sun, 19 Nov 2023 07:53:27 +0100 https://indilib.org/individuals/devices/cameras/mallincam.html OmegonPro https://indilib.org/individuals/devices/cameras/omegonpro.html ]]> naheedsa Sun, 19 Nov 2023 07:43:53 +0100 https://indilib.org/individuals/devices/cameras/omegonpro.html Ogmacam https://indilib.org/individuals/devices/cameras/ogmacam.html ]]> naheedsa Sun, 19 Nov 2023 07:38:56 +0100 https://indilib.org/individuals/devices/cameras/ogmacam.html Orion StarShoot G3/G4 https://indilib.org/individuals/devices/cameras/orion-starshoot-g3-g4.html ]]> naheedsa Sun, 19 Nov 2023 07:33:04 +0100 https://indilib.org/individuals/devices/cameras/orion-starshoot-g3-g4.html PlayerOne Camera 1 https://indilib.org/individuals/devices/cameras/playerone-camera-1.html ]]> naheedsa Sun, 19 Nov 2023 07:05:51 +0100 https://indilib.org/individuals/devices/cameras/playerone-camera-1.html Teleskop https://indilib.org/individuals/devices/cameras/teleskop.html ]]> naheedsa Sun, 19 Nov 2023 06:23:31 +0100 https://indilib.org/individuals/devices/cameras/teleskop.html StartshootG https://indilib.org/individuals/devices/cameras/startshootg.html ]]> naheedsa Sun, 19 Nov 2023 06:17:09 +0100 https://indilib.org/individuals/devices/cameras/startshootg.html Nncam https://indilib.org/individuals/devices/cameras/nncam.html naheedsa Sun, 19 Nov 2023 05:46:39 +0100 https://indilib.org/individuals/devices/cameras/nncam.html SVBony Cameras https://indilib.org/individuals/devices/cameras/svbony-sv305-cameras.html

Installation

The INDI SVBony driver supports SV305 and later models on Linux & MacOS. The SV105 and SV205 are UVC devices and can be controlled via the INDI V4L2 or Webcam drivers.

Under Ubuntu, you can install the driver via:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:mutlaqja/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install indi-svbony

Features

Main Control Panel

The driver supports the standard single-frame capture mode in addition to video streaming when supported. Furthermore, it supports:

  • SV305 Pro ST4 port guiding
  • Software Framing/ROI.
  • Software Binning
  • Slow, medium and fast framing
  • RAW8 and RAW12 frame format
  • Dynamic stretching in RAW12 mode
  • Color bayer pattern

Operation

Connecting to SVBony Cameras

Simply connect the camera via USB to your PC or SBC (Single board computer). The camera can be connected to an external powered hub as well. You can connect multiple cameras

General Info

General Info

The main control tab provides settings to adjust common camera parameters such as gain, gamma, contrast..etc. You may choose between RAW 12 bits depth or RAW 8 bits depth frame format. For planetary imaging or fast streaming, use the Fast framerate. For long exposure, use Normal or Slow.

RAW 12 bits depth frames are stored as 16 bits FITS files. By default, the driver use the 12 least significant bits, resulting in very dark images. You can then choose a stretch factor.

Capture

To capture a signle-frame image, simple set the desired exposure time in seconds and click Set. After the capture is complete, it should be downloaded as a FITS image. If the camera is equipped with a cooler, target temperature can be set. To change the format and bit depth (if supported), select a different image format in the Main Control tab.

Options

Options

The Options tab contains settings for default file locations, upload behavior, and debugging. The polling period for this driver should be kept as is unless you need to reduce it for a specific reason.

  1. Debug: Toggle driver debug logging on/off
  2. Configuration: After changing driver settings, click Save to save the changes to the configuration file. The saved values should be used when starting the driver again in the future. The configuration file is saved to the user home directory under .indi directory in an XML file.(e.g. ~/.indi/camera_name.xml)
  3. Snoop Device: The camera driver can listen to properties defined in other drivers. This can be used to store the relevant information in the FITS header (like the mount's RA and DE coordinates). The respective drivers (Telescope, Focuser..etc) are usually set by the client, but can be set directly if desired.
  4. Rapid Guide: Rapid Guide uses internal algorithm to automataically select guide stars.
  5. Telescope: Toggle between Primary and Guide scope selection. This selection is required in order to calculate World-Coordinate-System (WCS) values like Field-Of-View (FOV). When WCS is enabled, the FITS header is populated with WCS keywords that enable clients to map the sources in the image to physical coordinates in the sky. Usually, you do not need to toggle this setting manually as it is usually set by the client automatically
  6. Upload: Selects how the captured image is saved/uploaded?
    • Client: The image is uploaded the client (i.e. Ekos or SkyCharts)
    • Local: The image is saved to local storage only.
    • Both: The image is saved to local storage and also uploaded to the client.
  7. Upload Settings: Sets the local desired directory and prefix used to save the image when either the Local or Both upload modes are active. The IMAGE_XXX is automatically replaced by the image name where the XXX is the image counter (i.e. M42_005.fits). The driver scan the local storage and increments the counter automatically when a new image is captured and stored.

Image Settings

Image Settings

In the Image Settings tab, you can configure the framing and binning of the captured image:

    • Frame: Set the desired Region-Of-Interest (ROI) by specifying the starting X and Y positions of the image and the desired width and height. It is recommended to set use even numbers only to enable binning if required. The ROI values are indenepdent of the binning used.
    • Binning: Set the desired binning. The usually supported

Image compression can be turned on in image settings to compress FITS images. This might require more processing but can reduce the size of the image by up to 70%. The uploaded image would have an extenstion of .fits.fz and it can be viewed in multiple clients like KStars.

The Frame Type property is used to mark the frame type in the FITS header which is useful information for some processing applications. If there an electronic or mechanical shutter, the driver closes it automatically when taking dark frames.

To restore the ROI to the default values, click on the Reset button.

Image Info

Image Info

The image info tab contains information on the resolution of the camera (Maximum Width & Height) in addition to the pixel size in microns. If the camera supports Bayer mask, then the bayer filter and offset can be set here. These are usually set automatically by the driver, but can be adjusted manually if needed.

Issues

These are mostly firmware related

  • Exposures can't be aborted
  • Intensive configuration changes could lead to a crash
  • Some shifts in frame order had been reported (frame N-1 uploaded instead of frame N)
]]>
knro Tue, 07 Sep 2021 05:13:35 +0100 https://indilib.org/individuals/devices/cameras/svbony-sv305-cameras.html
Player One Astronomy Cameras https://indilib.org/individuals/devices/cameras/player-one-astronomy-cameras.html

Installation

INDI PlayerOne cameras Driver currently supports all of PlayerOne mono and color cameras.

Under Ubuntu, you can install the driver via:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:mutlaqja/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install indi-playerone

Features

Main Control Panel

The driver supports the standard single-frame capture mode in addition to video streaming when supportted. Furthermore, it supports:

  • Guiding via ST4 port.
  • Color and Mono cameras.
  • RAW8, RAW16 and RGB24 image data support.
  • Temperature control if cooler is available.
  • Black and White balance adjustments.
  • USB bandwidth control and frame rate limit.
  • Gain, Offset, Flip, Hard Bin, etc controls.

Operation

Connecting to PlayerOne Cameras

Simply connect the camera via USB to your PC or SBC (Single board computer). The camera can be connected to an external powered hub as well. You can connect multiple cameras

General Info

General Info

This provides general information about the currently running driver and driver version.  It also lets you set the Observer and Object Information for the FITS Header.

Capture

To capture a signle-frame image, simple set the desired exposure time in seconds and click Set. After the capture is complete, it should be downloaded as a FITS image. If the camera is equipped with a cooler, target temperature can be set. To change the format and bit depth (if supported), select a different image format in the Controls tab.

Options

Options

The Options tab contains settings for default file locations, upload behavior, and debugging. The polling period for this driver should be kept as is unless you need to reduce it for a specific reason.

  1. Debug: Toggle driver debug logging on/off
  2. Configuration: After changing driver settings, click Save to save the changes to the configuration file. The saved values should be used when starting the driver again in the future. The configuration file is saved to the user home directory under .indi directory in an XML file.(e.g. ~/.indi/camera_name.xml)
  3. Snoop Device: The camera driver can listen to properties defined in other drivers. This can be used to store the relevant information in the FITS header (like the mount's RA and DE coordinates). The respective drivers (Telescope, Focuser..etc) are usually set by the client, but can be set directly if desired.
  4. Rapid Guide: Rapid Guide uses internal algorithm to automataically select guide stars.
  5. Telescope: Toggle between Primary and Guide scope selection. This selection is required in order to calculate World-Coordinate-System (WCS) values like Field-Of-View (FOV). When WCS is enabled, the FITS header is populated with WCS keywords that enable clients to map the sources in the image to physical coordinates in the sky. Usually, you do not need to toggle this setting manually as it is usually set by the client automatically
  6. Upload: Selects how the captured image is saved/uploaded?
    • Client: The image is uploaded the client (i.e. Ekos or SkyCharts)
    • Local: The image is saved to local storage only.
    • Both: The image is saved to local storage and also uploaded to the client.
  7. Upload Settings: Sets the local desired directory and prefix used to save the image when either the Local or Both upload modes are active. The IMAGE_XXX is automatically replaced by the image name where the XXX is the image counter (i.e. M42_005.fits). The driver scan the local storage and increments the counter automatically when a new image is captured and stored.

Image Settings

Image Settings

In the Image Settings tab, you can configure the framing and binning of the captured image:

    • Frame: Set the desired Region-Of-Interest (ROI) by specifying the starting X and Y positions of the image and the desired width and height. It is recommended to set use even numbers only to enable binning if required. The ROI values are indenepdent of the binning used.
    • Binning: Set the desired binning. The usually supported

Image compression can be turned on in image settings to compress FITS images. This might require more processing but can reduce the size of the image by up to 70%. The uploaded image would have an extenstion of .fits.fz and it can be viewed in multiple clients like KStars.

The Frame Type property is used to mark the frame type in the FITS header which is useful information for some processing applications. If there an electronic or mechanical shutter, the driver closes it automatically when taking dark frames.

To restore the ROI to the default values, click on the Reset button.

Image Info

Image Info

The image info tab contains information on the resolution of the CCD (Maximum Width & Height) in addition to the pixel size in microns. If the camera supports Bayer mask, then the bayer filter and offset can be set here. These are usually set automatically by the driver, but can be adjusted manually if needed.

Controls

Controls

The controls tab provides settings to adjust common camera parameters such as gain, gamma, brightness, contrast..etc.

The Auto switches enable to automatically calibrate exposure and while/black balance using the camera own internal algorithms. For astronomy, it is usually recommended to set all controls manually to achieve the most level of control over the produced images.

Some cameras support higher bit depth rates such as 10, 12, and 14bits. However, the generated FITS file is either 8bit or 16bit, so any intermediate bit depths are automatically stored as 16bit.

For color camera, the formats are RGB and RAW. If RGB is selected, the FITS color image would be stored as an 8bit per channel color image. For RAW images, the FITS image is stored using higher bit depths if supported by the camera (10, 12..etc). Therefore, to capture images in high bit-depths, select the RAW format.

]]>
hiro3110 Tue, 31 Aug 2021 08:14:02 +0100 https://indilib.org/individuals/devices/cameras/player-one-astronomy-cameras.html
Pentax DSLR https://indilib.org/individuals/devices/cameras/pentax-dslr.html

This driver supports various Pentax cameras in MSC and/or PTP mode, depending on the camera.

Installation

The driver requires two libraries: libRicohCameraSDKCpp and libPkTriggerCord. These are included with indi-pentax in the indi-3rdparty repository.

sudo apt install indi-pentax 

Compatibility

In general, a greater number of cameras are supported in MSC mode. However, in certain use cases on more recent cameras (e.g. no bulb mode, no prime focus), PTP mode is more reliable and will get you live view as well. See known issues.

Based on the documentation for the libraries that this driver relies upon, the following cameras should work. However, only cameras with an asterisk are actually confirmed. Please update this list if you verify support for any camera:

  • Pentax K-01 (MSC - known bugs)
  • PENTAX K-1 (PTP, MSC?)
  • PENTAX K-1 Mark II (PTP, MSC?)
  • Pentax K-3 / K-3 II (MSC)
  • Pentax K-5 (MSC)
  • Pentax K-5 II / K-5 IIs (MSC)
  • Pentax K-7 (MSC)
  • Pentax K10D / Samsung GX-10 (MSC - fw 1.20 or later)
  • Pentax K20D / Samsung GX-20 (MSC)
  • Pentax K-30 (MSC - no bulb) *
  • Pentax K-50 (MSC - known bugs)
  • PENTAX K-70 (PTP, MSC - with bugs) *
  • Pentax K200D (MSC)
  • Pentax K-500 (MSC)
  • PENTAX 645Z (PTP, MSC?)
  • Pentax K-r (MSC)
  • Pentax K-m / K2000 (MSC)
  • PENTAX KP (PTP, MSC?)

Cameras suspected to have limited MSC support include:

  • Pentax istDS2
  • Pentax istDL
  • Pentax K100D Super

Cameras likely not to work include:

  • Pentax istDS
  • Pentax istD
  • Samsung GX-1L
  • Pentax K110D
  • Pentax K100D
  • Pentax K-S2

Features

The exact set of features available will depend on the current USB mode and capture mode of the camera. Not all features will be available on all cameras. The following is a rough list of what to expect:

  • Still image capture
  • Live View (PTP mode only)
  • Capture as FITS (processor intensive), Native, or both
  • Change image format (JPEG, PEF, or DNG) (DNG is saved as a .raw file)
  • Predefined capture mode support (e.g. Auto, Manual, etc.)
  • Bulb mode support (MSC mode only)
  • Set shutter speed to any supported by the capture mode to which the camera is currently set
  • Change ISO (For certain cameras, such as K70, works in PTP mode only)
  • Change Exposure (For certain cameras, such as K70, works in PTP mode only)
  • Change White Balance
  • Change JPEG image quality
  • Change JPEG image resolution (PTP mode only)
  • Toggle save to SD Card (PTP mode only)
  • Monitor battery level

The driver should support multiple cameras at once, and the author is happy to verify that if anyone wants to donate another camera.

If there's a feature that PkTriggerCord supports for your camera, but the driver currently does not, it should be possible to add support. Contact the author with requests.

Operation

  1. First, be sure the camera is in the desired USB mode (PTP or MSC). Then connect the camera via a USB cable to the Indi host and power the camera on.
  2. Set the camera to the appropriate capture mode. For MSC mode, Bulb (B) provides maximum flexibility for exposures greater than 1 second, and M mode is recommended otherwise. For PTP mode, Manual (M) is suggested for maximum flexibility.
  3. Start indiserver on the host with "Pentax DSLR (Native)" selected as a driver.

If you are starting indiserver from the command line, you can use:

indiserver indi_pentax
  1. Launch your Indi client, if you are not already in the client, and click "Connect" if you are not already connected.
  2. Once connected, you should see a device pane for your Pentax camera. The device pane will have a number of tabs. You may change most settings in the Image Settings tab of the Indi Control Panel, though FITs/Native settings are in the Options tab.
  3. To capture an image using the Indi Control Panel, go to the Main Control tab and select an exposure duration. Then click "Set" to start the exposure.

Note that unless you are in bulb mode, the exposure time you choose will not be the exact exposure time, but will be matched to the closest predefined exposure time of your current capture mode.

  1. For Live View, be sure you are in PTP mode, and select the Streaming tab.

Images and Live View are also supported through Ekos, as explained in the Ekos documentation.

Switching operational modes

You may switch capture modes (e.g. switch from Auto to Manual or Manual to Bulb) at any time.

To switch between PTP and MSC, you will need to unplug the camera from the host and change to the desired USB mode using the on-camera menu. You may need to manually disconnect from the driver in the Indi client (e.g. using the "Disconnect" button) if you are in MSC mode. Then, plug the camera back into the host and click on "Connect" again. A separate device pane will be created for your new USB mode, if it does not already exist. Switch to the new device pane and cick "Connect" to continue in the new USB mode.

Known Issues

All modes

  • On low-power systems (e.g. Raspberry Pi 3 and older), for performance reasons, the Native output format is recommended for the driver instead of FITS. In such environments, if you need FITs, I would recommend running KStars remotely, and configuring Ekos to auto-convert to FITS.
  • When DNG format is selected, images are currently saved with a "raw" extension. This is because Indi seems to have a bug with .DNG files where it grabs the JPEG preview out of DNGs and discards the rest of the DNG file. The raw files may be safely renamed to ".DNG."
  • Download time estimates computed by Ekos are wrong, especially if you're using a slower system like a Raspberry Pi 3.

PTP mode only

  • No support for PTP mode on 64-bit ARM-based operating systems.
  • Bulb capture does not work in PTP mode.
  • Many settings (including exposure time) are unavailable in PTP mode when a lens is not attached (i.e. for prime focus).
  • When compiled on a Raspberry Pi 3B running Ubuntu Mate 18.0.4 (32 bit), PTP mode does not work. This appears to be because the indi_pentax binary generated by the compiler is for armv7, whereas the library files provided by Ricoh are for armv6. Yet, I currently cannot figure out how to get indi-pentax to compile if I force the compiler to armv6. A workaraound is to use a binary generated on Raspbian.

MSC mode only

  • No Live View.
  • Changing ISO and exposure compensation do not work on the K-70 in MSC mode (probably other cameras as well).
  • Driver-based conversion from JPEG to FITs throws a corrupt JPEG error. This does not actually seem to cause problems, but I could be wrong. To avoid the issue, though, select Native format for the driver, and configure KStars to convert to FITs if you need it (recommended anyway, see above). Or capture in RAW format instead of JPEG.
]]>
karlrees Mon, 24 Aug 2020 21:25:06 +0100 https://indilib.org/individuals/devices/cameras/pentax-dslr.html
Toupcam Cameras https://indilib.org/individuals/devices/cameras/toupcam-cameras.html

Installation

INDI Toupcam cameras Driver currently supports all of Toupcam mono and color cameras.

Under Ubuntu, you can install the driver via:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:mutlaqja/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install indi-toupbase

Features

Main Control Panel

The driver supports the standard single-frame capture mode in addition to video streaming when supportted. Furthermore, it supports:

  • Guiding via ST4 port.
  • Color and Mono cameras.
  • 8, 10, 12, 14 and 16 bit support. For 10,12 and 14bit cameras, the images are always stored using 16bit depth.
  • Temperature control if cooler is available.
  • Black and White balance adjustments.
  • USB Speed control: This is important when the camera is used on ARM architectures like the Raspberry PI3.
  • Gain, Brightness, Saturating, Gamma...etc controls.

Operation

Connecting to Toupcam Cameras

Simply connect the camera via USB to your PC or SBC (Single board computer). The camera can be connected to an external powered hub as well. You can connect multiple cameras

The camera is very sensitive to power fluctuations. Make sure to use a 3A power supply if the camera is connected to RPI3/StellarMate. The USB speed is automatically adjusted to lower values since USB bandwidth on RPI3 is limited and can cause the camera to indefnitely loop. If the camera gets stuck during exposure, change the cable, and check the power and USB speed settings.

General Info

General Info

This provides general information about the currently running driver and driver version.  It also lets you set the Observer and Object Information for the FITS Header.

Capture

To capture a signle-frame image, simple set the desired exposure time in seconds and click Set. After the capture is complete, it should be downloaded as a FITS image. If the camera is equipped with a cooler, target temperature can be set. To change the format and bit depth (if supported), select a different image format in the Controls tab.

Options

Options

The Options tab contains settings for default file locations, upload behavior, and debugging. The polling period for this driver should be kept as is unless you need to reduce it for a specific reason.

  1. Debug: Toggle driver debug logging on/off
  2. Configuration: After changing driver settings, click Save to save the changes to the configuration file. The saved values should be used when starting the driver again in the future. The configuration file is saved to the user home directory under .indi directory in an XML file.(e.g. ~/.indi/camera_name.xml)
  3. Snoop Device: The camera driver can listen to properties defined in other drivers. This can be used to store the relevant information in the FITS header (like the mount's RA and DE coordinates). The respective drivers (Telescope, Focuser..etc) are usually set by the client, but can be set directly if desired.
  4. Rapid Guide: Rapid Guide uses internal algorithm to automataically select guide stars.
  5. Telescope: Toggle between Primary and Guide scope selection. This selection is required in order to calculate World-Coordinate-System (WCS) values like Field-Of-View (FOV). When WCS is enabled, the FITS header is populated with WCS keywords that enable clients to map the sources in the image to physical coordinates in the sky. Usually, you do not need to toggle this setting manually as it is usually set by the client automatically
  6. Upload: Selects how the captured image is saved/uploaded?
    • Client: The image is uploaded the client (i.e. Ekos or SkyCharts)
    • Local: The image is saved to local storage only.
    • Both: The image is saved to local storage and also uploaded to the client.
  7. Upload Settings: Sets the local desired directory and prefix used to save the image when either the Local or Both upload modes are active. The IMAGE_XXX is automatically replaced by the image name where the XXX is the image counter (i.e. M42_005.fits). The driver scan the local storage and increments the counter automatically when a new image is captured and stored.

Image Settings

Image Settings

In the Image Settings tab, you can configure the framing and binning of the captured image:

    • Frame: Set the desired Region-Of-Interest (ROI) by specifying the starting X and Y positions of the image and the desired width and height. It is recommended to set use even numbers only to enable binning if required. The ROI values are indenepdent of the binning used.
    • Binning: Set the desired binning. The usually supported

Image compression can be turned on in image settings to compress FITS images. This might require more processing but can reduce the size of the image by up to 70%. The uploaded image would have an extenstion of .fits.fz and it can be viewed in multiple clients like KStars.

The Frame Type property is used to mark the frame type in the FITS header which is useful information for some processing applications. If there an electronic or mechanical shutter, the driver closes it automatically when taking dark frames.

To restore the ROI to the default values, click on the Reset button.

Image Info

Image Info

The image info tab contains information on the resolution of the CCD (Maximum Width & Height) in addition to the pixel size in microns. If the camera supports Bayer mask, then the bayer filter and offset can be set here. These are usually set automatically by the driver, but can be adjusted manually if needed.

Controls

Controls

The controls tab provides settings to adjust common camera parameters such as gain, gamma, brightness, contrast..etc.

A very important parameter is the Speed setting. Setting it to maximum will fully utlize the USB bandwidth available on the device and will deliver images faster, but this is problematic on small embedded device like Raspberry PI. For such devices, the USB speed default to 0. You may expeiment with adjusting it until you achieve a good balance between performance and stability.

The Auto switches enable to automatically calibrate exposure and while/black balance using the camera own internal algorithms. For astronomy, it is usually recommended to set all controls manually to achieve the most level of control over the produced images.

Some cameras support higher bit depth rates such as 10, 12, and 14bits. However, the generated FITS file is either 8bit or 16bit, so any intermediate bit depths are automatically stored as 16bit.

The image resolution can be directly selected here, though it is prefreable to set the ROI in the Image Settings tab.

Dual Gain

Modern CMOS sensor often support Dual Conversion Gain with a Low and High Conversion Gain setting (LCG/HCG). When the camera supports Dual Gain, three additional parameters are displayed at the Control Tab. High Conversion Gain (HCG) multiplies the gain with an additional factor. This has a positive impact on the read noise. The regular Gain parameter has a continuous range taking the conversion gain setting into account.

The HCG Threshold is the gain setting at which the camera switches over to HCG. For example with IMX294 sensors this is usually set to 900. The HCG/LCG gain ratio is a fixed property of the camera and needs to be set to the design value. For the IMX294 the value is 4.5. For other camera's it is usually 2.0. The Dual Gain Mode parameter enables the special HDR mode of the camera, as well as overriding the HCG/LCG setting.

Dual Gain can be disabled by setting HCG/LCG gain ratio to 1.0. Dual Gain is disabled when HDR is selected.

Levels

Levels

Control the maximum and minimum ranges for all color channels. The RGB black levels can also be adjusted. By default, all levels are set to the maximum data range (0-255).

Firmware

Firmware

Display the camera firmware information.

Issues

      There are no known bugs for this driver. If you found a bug, please report it at INDI's

bug tracking system

      at SourceForge. (You can log in with a variety of existing accounts, including Google, Yahoo and OpenID.)

]]>
knro Sun, 14 Apr 2019 06:04:38 +0100 https://indilib.org/individuals/devices/cameras/toupcam-cameras.html
Altair Cameras https://indilib.org/individuals/devices/cameras/altair-cameras.html

Installation

INDI Altair cameras Driver currently supports all of Altair Astro mono and color cameras.

Under Ubuntu, you can install the driver via:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:mutlaqja/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install indi-toupbase

Features

Main Control Panel

The driver supports the standard single-frame capture mode in addition to video streaming when supportted. Furthermore, it supports:

  • Guiding via ST4 port.
  • Color and Mono cameras.
  • 8, 10, 12, 14 and 16 bit support. For 10, 12 and 14bit cameras, the images are always stored using 16bit depth.
  • Temperature control if cooler is available.
  • Black and White balance adjustments.
  • USB Speed control: This is important when the camera is used on ARM architectures like the Raspberry PI3.
  • Gain, Brightness, Saturating, Gamma...etc controls.

Operation

Connecting to Altair Cameras

Simply connect the camera via USB to your PC or SBC (Single board computer). The camera can be connected to an external powered hub as well. You can connect multiple cameras

The camera is very sensitive to power fluctuations. Make sure to use a 3A power supply if the camera is connected to StellarMate. The USB speed is automatically adjusted to lower values since USB bandwidth on RPI4 is limited and can cause the camera to indefnitely loop. If the camera gets stuck during exposure, change the cable, and check the power and USB speed settings.

General Info

General Info

This provides general information about the currently running driver and driver version.  It also lets you set the Observer and Object Information for the FITS Header.

Capture

To capture a signle-frame image, simple set the desired exposure time in seconds and click Set. After the capture is complete, it should be downloaded as a FITS image. If the camera is equipped with a cooler, target temperature can be set. To change the format and bit depth (if supported), select a different image format in the Controls tab.

Options

Options

The Options tab contains settings for default file locations, upload behavior, and debugging. The polling period for this driver should be kept as is unless you need to reduce it for a specific reason.

  1. Debug: Toggle driver debug logging on/off
  2. Configuration: After changing driver settings, click Save to save the changes to the configuration file. The saved values should be used when starting the driver again in the future. The configuration file is saved to the user home directory under .indi directory in an XML file.(e.g. ~/.indi/camera_name.xml)
  3. Snoop Device: The camera driver can listen to properties defined in other drivers. This can be used to store the relevant information in the FITS header (like the mount's RA and DE coordinates). The respective drivers (Telescope, Focuser..etc) are usually set by the client, but can be set directly if desired.
  4. Rapid Guide: Rapid Guide uses internal algorithm to automataically select guide stars.
  5. Telescope: Toggle between Primary and Guide scope selection. This selection is required in order to calculate World-Coordinate-System (WCS) values like Field-Of-View (FOV). When WCS is enabled, the FITS header is populated with WCS keywords that enable clients to map the sources in the image to physical coordinates in the sky. Usually, you do not need to toggle this setting manually as it is usually set by the client automatically
  6. Upload: Selects how the captured image is saved/uploaded?
    • Client: The image is uploaded the client (i.e. Ekos or SkyCharts)
    • Local: The image is saved to local storage only.
    • Both: The image is saved to local storage and also uploaded to the client.
  7. Upload Settings: Sets the local desired directory and prefix used to save the image when either the Local or Both upload modes are active. The IMAGE_XXX is automatically replaced by the image name where the XXX is the image counter (i.e. M42_005.fits). The driver scan the local storage and increments the counter automatically when a new image is captured and stored.

Image Settings

Image Settings

In the Image Settings tab, you can configure the framing and binning of the captured image:

    • Frame: Set the desired Region-Of-Interest (ROI) by specifying the starting X and Y positions of the image and the desired width and height. It is recommended to set use even numbers only to enable binning if required. The ROI values are indenepdent of the binning used.
    • Binning: Set the desired binning. The usually supported

Image compression can be turned on in image settings to compress FITS images. This might require more processing but can reduce the size of the image by up to 70%. The uploaded image would have an extenstion of .fits.fz and it can be viewed in multiple clients like KStars.

The Frame Type property is used to mark the frame type in the FITS header which is useful information for some processing applications. If there an electronic or mechanical shutter, the driver closes it automatically when taking dark frames.

To restore the ROI to the default values, click on the Reset button.

Image Info

Image Info

The image info tab contains information on the resolution of the CCD (Maximum Width & Height) in addition to the pixel size in microns. If the camera supports Bayer mask, then the bayer filter and offset can be set here. These are usually set automatically by the driver, but can be adjusted manually if needed.

Controls

Controls

The controls tab provides settings to adjust common camera parameters such as gain, gamma, brightness, contrast..etc.

A very important parameter is the Speed setting. Setting it to maximum will fully utlize the USB bandwidth available on the device and will deliver images faster, but this is problematic on small embedded device like Raspberry PI. For such devices, the USB speed default to 0. You may expeiment with adjusting it until you achieve a good balance between performance and stability. Sometimes, even lower USB speed would not resolve image capture failures on embedded devices. Try selecting a lower resolution and then try again.

The Auto switches enable to automatically calibrate exposure and while/black balance using the camera own internal algorithms. For astronomy, it is usually recommended to set all controls manually to achieve the most level of control over the produced images.

Some cameras support higher bit depth rates such as 10, 12, and 14bits. However, the generated FITS file is either 8bit or 16bit, so any intermediate bit depths are automatically stored as 16bit.

For color camera, the formats are RGB and RAW. If RGB is selected, the FITS color image would be stored as an 8bit per channel color image. For RAW images, the FITS image is stored using higher bit depths if supported by the camera (10, 12..etc). Therefore, to capture images in high bit-depths, select the RAW format.

The image resolution can be directly selected here, though it is prefreable to set the ROI in the Image Settings tab.

Dual Gain

Modern CMOS sensor often support Dual Conversion Gain with a Low and High Conversion Gain setting (LCG/HCG). When the camera supports Dual Gain, three additional parameters are displayed at the Control Tab. High Conversion Gain (HCG) multiplies the gain with an additional factor. This has a positive impact on the read noise. The regular Gain parameter has a continuous range taking the conversion gain setting into account.

The HCG Threshold is the gain setting at which the camera switches over to HCG. For example with IMX294 sensors this is usually set to 900. The HCG/LCG gain ratio is a fixed property of the camera and needs to be set to the design value. For the IMX294 the value is 4.5. For other camera's it is usually 2.0. The Dual Gain Mode parameter enables the special HDR mode of the camera, as well as overriding the HCG/LCG setting.

Dual Gain can be disabled by setting HCG/LCG gain ratio to 1.0. Dual Gain is disabled when HDR is selected.

On embedded platforms (Raspberry Pi, Odroid..etc), the camera exposure can fail with Exposure Timeout messages due to limitations in the camera SDK as it does not properly handle USB bandwidth on embedded devices. As of 2020-02-18, the SDK is still not updated to fix the USB resolution issues. One way to resolve this issue is by reducing the resolution.

Levels

Levels

Control the maximum and minimum ranges for all color channels. The RGB black levels can also be adjusted. By default, all levels are set to the maximum data range (0-255).

Firmware

Firmware

Display the camera firmware information.

Issues

Frames may drop when running on embedded single board computers. Please adjust the USB speed and bandwidth accordingly to achieve best results.

]]>
knro Sun, 14 Apr 2019 06:04:38 +0100 https://indilib.org/individuals/devices/cameras/altair-cameras.html
Web Cameras https://indilib.org/individuals/devices/cameras/indi-webcam.html

Installation

INDI Webcam driver supports many types of webcam devices on both Mac OS X and Linux.  Since it is built on FFMPEG libraries, a widely-used multimedia plaform available on most operating systems, it can support a wide range of devices on many different operating systems.  The driver is available for download as a 3rd party driver from INDI's download page.  For OS X, it will come bundled with KStars and other INDI Server applications. Under Linux, this driver requires Ubuntu 18.04+. You can install it via:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:mutlaqja/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install indi-webcam

Features

The INDI Webcam driver should support many different types of devices including:

  • AV Foundation Cameras on OS X
  • V4L2 Cameras on LInux
  • DC 1394 Cameras on Linux
  • IP Cameras over Ethernet and Wifi
  • Cell Phone and Mobile Device Cameras over Wifi using IP camera apps
  • Screen Capture on OS X and LInux
  • And any other devices supported by FFMPEG and the software libraries you have installed on your computer

The INDI Webcam driver has a number of interesting features:

  • Supports both Live Streaming and Single Image Capture
  • Can use a Webcam or Cell Phone Camera like an astrophotography camera
  • Can do rapid stacking in integration mode to add many frames in the set exposure time to increase signal
  • Can do rapid stacking in averaging mode to average many frames in the exposure time to reduce noise
  • Can take 8 bit RGB, 16 bit RGB, and 16 bit Grayscale images.
  • Supports ROI subframing

Before connecting

Before you can connect to your webcam and use it in an INDI client, you should do the following:

  • Configure your profile in KStars or other client program
  • Plug in your webcam (or on a mobile phone, start up the IP camera Server)
  • Turn on your webcam (if required)
  • Start or Connect to the INDI Server from the client
  • Select your Video Device, Video Source, Frame Rate, and Video Size

Configuring a Profile in KStars

In order to use your Webcam in KStars, the first step is to configure the CCD setting in a new profile or editing and existing one. Here is a new profile where we are selecting our CCD as an INDI Webcam CCD.  Other software may have similar configuration steps.

Profile

Note that it is not a good idea to have "Autoconnect" selected in this driver before you configure your connection settings and save your configuration file.

Connecting to a Webcam's Video Stream

Connection Webcam

To connect to the Video Stream of your webcam, you need to first select the Capture Device, the Capture Source, the Frame Rate, and the Video Size.  If there is not a stream currently connected, your settings will be changed and then tested when you press the connect button.  Since FFMPEG requires this information in order to connect to a video stream, these settings must be correct first.  

After you have already connected to a working video stream, you can try changing these settings at any time while the driver is up and running and even while live streaming, but note that any time you change these 4 settings, it will cause FFMPEG to disconnect from the current video stream and try to reconnect to your new video stream.  If it fails to connect to the new stream and a video stream was already running, it will switch back to the old working video stream.  

You can change the settings for the Capture Device, the Capture Source, the Frame Rate, and the Video Size by either clicking their buttons or by typing the new information into the "Input Options" and clicking the set button.  The current connection information is always displayed under the Input Options.  If the attempt to change the connection was successful, the LED next to that option should turn green, if it was not successful, it will stay yellow.

Capture Device

This setting is not the camera you are connecting to, but the "device" being used to make the connection.  On Mac OS X, most webcam cameras supported by this driver will use the AV Foundation Device.  On Linux, most of them will either be supported by V4L2 or lbdc1394.  There are many more device types supported by FFMPEG, so the others might be useful too.  

NOTE:  Changing the device type will cause the driver to disconnect because you need to select the source in order to test the connection and the source list is invalid once you change devices.  You will need to reconnect if you change this.

Capture Source

This setting is the camera or source you are trying to connect to.   The V4L2 device on Linux and the AV Foundation device on Macs support enumerating and listing all the sources the device supports, so that when you select these devices they will populate the source list with all the available selections.  Other devices might not support this function, so you might need to look up what the source will be called.  For example, on Linux, a camera source might be called "/dev/video0." If you need a custom source name, you can type it in the Input Options.

NOTE: Changing the Video Source will cause the driver to immediately try the new connection.

Frame Rate

This setting is the frame rate you are requesting that the camera be set to.  Many cameras support various frame rates, but not all cameras support all rates.  You can try the rates that are in the drop down list and if you want one that is not listed, you can type it in the Input Options.  Usually, camera manufacturers will tell you what frame rates the camera can handle.  Please note that changing the Exposure time will NOT change the Frame Rate of the camera.

NOTE: Changing the Frame Rate will cause the driver to immediately try the new connection.

Video Size (Resolution)

This setting is the Video Size or resolution you are requesting that the camera be set to.  Many cameras support various resolutions, but not all cameras support all sizes listed.  You can try the sizes that are in the drop down list and if you want one that is not listed, you can type it in the Input Options. Usually, camera manufacturers will tell you what video sizes the camera can handle.

NOTE: Changing the Video Size will cause the driver to immediately try the new connection.

NOTE:  Changing the video size may cause the subframe information to be incorrect at first in clients such as KStars.  You will need to click the "Reset" Button to reset the frame to the new resolution.

Connecting to an IP Camera or Cell Phone Stream

Connection IP Camera

To connect to a video stream coming from a cell phone's camera, first you need to to be sure to have an IP camera server app running on your cell phone that serves up the video stream for the driver to obtain.  These apps are available for most mobile phones.  This video stream is usually protected by a user name and password so that it is more secure.    In most of these apps, they include a screen that makes it easy for you to get the IP Address and port number the IP server app is currently using.  The user name and password is usually set in the settings of the app.  Just type all of this information into the IP Camera settings boxes and assuming all of it is correct, you should be able to connect.  

If you have trouble connecting, please make sure that both your computer and your cellphone are on the network.  Then make sure your IP Camera connection settings are correct. Also, you might want to change the FFMPEG timeout in the Options tab if it is timing out before it has a chance to connect.

Using the webcam with an INDI client

The INDI Webcam driver not only supports using the webcam for live streaming, but also for regular FITS exposures.  So you can use your webcam just like you use all of your astronomy cameras in clients such as KStars.  You can use them for all astronomy tasks such as imaging, focusing, plate solving, and guiding.  

Subframes

Even though webcams typically do not support ROI or subframing, the driver does support this in the software.  This will mean less data transferred over the network and less hard disk space for storage of images.  Subframes are supported in both the live stream and in regular exposure capture.

Exposure Time

Changing the requested exposure time will NOT change the frame rate or exposure time of the camera because it is a webcam.  However, changing the exposure time will have an effect if you select one of the rapid stacking options.  

If you want to change the framerate/exposure time of the actual images, you can change that in the "Frame Rate" setting in the driver options.  

If you have one of the rapid stacking options selected, the driver will attempt to take as many images as it can in the exposure time selected.  Then depending on which rapid stacking option you selected, it will either average or add the exposures together.  It will then return the resulting stack as the final exposure requested.  This can possibly make a webcam perform much better, reducing the noise in the exposure through averaging or increasing the signal for faint objects.

Special Features

Rapid Stacking

This driver includes a special rapid stacking feature that enables a webcam to be used more like a regular astronomy camera.  Webcams are typically limited in astronomy to being used for imaging the moon and bright planets due to the short exposure times they are capable of and high noise.  In one of the rapid stacking modes, the webcam's flaw is turned into a feature when it is used to rapidly capture as many frames as possible in the "exposure time" and then to either average or stack the frames depending upon the user's selection.

Input and Output Formats

FFMPEG provides support for a wide range of different input and output formats.  Because of this, the INDI Webcam Driver can take just about any input format from the camera and turn it into a usable video stream in a compatible format for INDI.  Also because of this, the driver could be capable of supporting a large number of output formats as well.  As of now, the driver is currently setup to allow the user to select between 16 bit Grayscale, 16 bit RGB, and 8 bit RGB.  Please note that while all of these are supported by the regular exposure mode, in Live Video Streaming, it must have 8 bit images.  Thus, when live streaming, if either RGB mode is selected, 8 bit RGB will be used for Streaming and if 16 bit Grayscale is selected, 8 bit Grayscale will be used for Streaming.

Screen Capture

Since FFMPEG supports screen capture devices as a input, screen capture is supported by this driver.  You might think at first that this is useless for an astronomical device driver, but it can also be very useful for testing purposes.  it could be used for testing guiding algorithms, for testing plate solving, and other items.  To use screen capture on Macs, it is provided by the AV Foundation device with a source like "Capture Screen 0".  To use screen capture on LInux, you can use the x11grab device with a source string something like this ":0.0+100,200" which means to capture the main display screen with the upper left corner of your source at pixel position 100, 200.  It then uses the width and height that are set in your Video Size parameter.  Note that with the screen capture sources, you can still subrame and do everything you can with the webcam sources.

Integrated Webcams

As with Screen Capture, you might think a webcam integrated into your device might have a limited use in astonomy.  But it is great for testing out software and for learning how to use KStars or other INDI clients' features.  It is also the only camera that is permanently attached to you computer and ready for you to use immediately.

IP Cameras

There are a number of cameras out there that are accessed via their IP address where video is streamed over the network as opposed to webcams that are directly connected to a computer.  These video streams need to be accessed in a different way and the INDI Webcam driver now supports that.  To use this feature, it is important to have the camera on the network, either connected over wifi or ethernet.  It is also vital that you know the current IP address of the camera, the port number it is using, and the user name and password used to access the stream.

Cell Phone Cameras

Many people have actually thought about using their cell phones for astrophotography.  At many astronomy events, I have had people look through the eyepiece of my telescope and almost immediately they want to take a photo with their phone.  This driver should enable the usage of that cell phone camera for more serious astrophotography applications as well.  You could use your phone for imaging planets and other bright astronomical objects using rapid stacking or "lucky imaging" techniques.  You could also use the phone for guiding, although it is a really expensive guide camera unless you are using an old phone that you have no other use for.  In my testing, I was getting up to 20 frames per second full HD video from my phone on my home network, which is more than adequate for these purposes.  

Driver Settings Tabs

Main Control

The main control tab handles the Connect and Disconnect functions of the driver.   Please see the Connection Settings tab for setting the options for which sources/cameras to connect to.  Also in the Main Control Tab, you can Select the Rapid Stacking Options, the Output Format of the Images taken, and set the exposure time.

 Main Control

General Info

This provides general information about the currently running driver and driver version.  It also lets you set the Observer and Object Information for the FITS Header.

General Info

Options Tab

The Options tab contains settings for default file locations, upload behavior, and debugging.   The polling period for this driver should be set as short as possible if you are using the rapid stacking features since you don't want a delay before it starts imaging.  

The FFMPEG time out is extremely important for two reasons.  First, when the driver first attempts to connect to a video stream, this setting determines how long it waits before determining that the source is not available.  Second, this setting determines how long it waits while attempting to download a video frame before deciding that the source is disconnected and attempting to reconnect. This may need to be adjusted depending upon the speed of your connection.  This setting is in micro seconds, so that 1,000,000 is one second, which is the default setting.

The Buffer time out is vital for flushing the frame buffer before taking images or streaming live video.  This attempts to ensure there are no stale images in the frame buffer.  When FFMPEG grabs a video frame from the buffer to read it, if it takes less time than this time out, then we assume it was a stale image already in the buffer.  If it takes more time than the timeout, then we assume this a fresh frame.  This may need to be adjusted depending upon the speed of your computer and your connection.  This setting is also in microseconds and the default is 10,000 which is 10 milliseconds.

 

Options2

Connection Tab

The connection tab is how you select the connection options in order to connect to your webcam, IP Camera, or Cell Phone.  All of these settings are important because FFMPEG will not connect to a video stream if these settings are incorrect.  Please see the sections above for details on what these settings mean and how to use them.

Connection Webcam

Connection IP Camera

Image Settings

In the Image setting Tab, you can set the Frame type and Region of Interest (subframe) of your image.

Image Settings

Image Info

This provides information about the currently connected webcam including the width and height, and the bits per pixel for the stream.  Please note that the pixel size is probably not correct since that is not reported by webcams.  This will be corrected in a future release.

Image Info

WCS

The WCS paneh will be used for adding WCS information to your images if enabled in the client.

WCS

Stream

The Stream Tab provides settings for configuring the live video streaming options for live video of planets or other objects.  It is identical to the Stream tab in other drivers.

Streaming

 

Issues

One known issue with this driver is that sometimes stale frames will be left in the buffer when starting a new image or a new live video stream.  I added a buffer flushing method based on the buffer timeout to try to combat this issue, but it can still happen sometimes.  Try setting the buffer timeout to change how stale frames are detected.

Another known issue is that sometimes FFMPEG randomly disconnects from the device.  This could be due to a network interruption, error in the stream, or other issue.  I have written the driver to try to detect these disconnections and then reconnect so that there is little to no interruption in imaging, but sometimes it does mess up an image or two.  You can also hit the connect button to reconnect as well.

Another possible issue when this driver is used with KStars in particular, is that when an image is first loaded, sometimes it is not displayed with the correct histogram stretch.  We have not yet determined if this is an issue with the driver or KStars or both.  But the image is NOT ruined, it is in fact perfectly fine.  There is an easy fix.  In each module of Ekos, there is a "Filter" selection.  If you select the "Auto Stretch" filter, your images will look correct as soon as you can see them.  You can also click the Auto Stretch button if you forgot to use the filter.

If you found a bug, please report it at INDI's bug tracking system at SourceForge. (You can log in with a variety of existing accounts, including Google, Yahoo and OpenID.)

]]>
rlancaste Sun, 15 Jul 2018 17:54:11 +0100 https://indilib.org/individuals/devices/cameras/indi-webcam.html
Celestron Nightscape 8300 https://indilib.org/individuals/devices/cameras/celestron-nightscape-8300.html

Installation

INDI Nightscape driver supports the Celestron Nightscape 8300 only. It may be possible to make it work with the KAI-10100  based nighscape but it will need quite a bit of adjusting to the different sensor. The driver is available for download as a 3rd party driver from INDI's download page. Under Ubuntu, you can install it via:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:mutlaqja/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install indi-nightscape

Features

The Nightscape driver should support all features of the Alta and Aspen cameras including

  • USB connection
  • Temperature setpoint
  • Hardware binning (vertical only. horizontal binning is implemented in software)
  • Frame sub-selection
  • Shutter capture mode; Dark, Bias, Light (this keeps shutter closed for dark and bias frames).
  • Fan speed
  • Selectable USB Libray (libftdi1 or FTDI D2XX).
  • Selecatbale camera number (for multiple cameras).

Configuration

In order to use your Nightscape 8300 camera in INDI the first step is to configure the CCD setting in a new profile or editing and existing one. Here is a new profile where we are selecting our CCD as a Nightscape CCD. 

Operation

After configuring your profile to use an Nighscape 8300 camera, connecting to INDI will create new tabs for your camera that contain your camera's detailed specifics. The driver only supports the Nighscape 8300 which uses a  Kodak KAF-8300 chip via USB. 

config

Main Control

maincontrol

Options

The Options tab contains various settings for simulation, default file locations, upload behavior and debugging.

options

Image Settings

The Image Settings tab contains default settings for binning, sub framing, compression and frame type. Frame type controls the shutter such that you can take dark and bias frames with the shutter closed. All these options are available in the Ekos CCD application, you could change them here to establish different start up defaults.

imagesettings

Image Info

The Image Info tab contains the read only details of the underlying CCD's dimensions, pixel size and bit depth.

imageinfo

Special Features

If you have both D2XX and libftdi1 installed, the driver will let you choose which  one to use at runtime. This is under the 'USB Library' tab.

Issues

The nightscape driver is very sensitive to USB performance, and will drop packets during download occasionally. This will corrupt the downloaded images. If you get fewer than 2506 ines for a full frame download you will probably have some image corruption, or at least missing lines. This behaviour is much better with D2XX insted of libftdi libraries.

Make sure you don't have anything else using your USB bus, use a 'good' USB port and don't run CPU intensive background programs, especially video playback.
The USB performance of older Raspberry Pi models is not sufficient to run this driver.

If you found a bug, please report it at INDI's bug tracking system at SourceForge. (You can log in with a variety of existing accounts, including Google, Yahoo and OpenID.)

]]>
knro Sun, 15 Jul 2018 12:02:28 +0100 https://indilib.org/individuals/devices/cameras/celestron-nightscape-8300.html
Moravian CCDs & Filter Wheels https://indilib.org/individuals/devices/cameras/moravian-ccds-filter-wheels.html

Installation

INDI MI driver is available for download as a 3rd party driver from INDI's download page. Under Ubuntu, you can install it via:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:mutlaqja/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install indi-mi

Features

INDI Moravian driver supports all Moravian Instruments (MI) family of cameras & filter wheels.

Operation

Once you're connected, you can capture images as FITS from the camera, control temperature, and set image binning and frame subset. The driver will automatically upload these images to the client in FITS format. If your camera is equipped with a filter wheel, you can control the position of the wheels and designate a name to each filter.

Issues

There are no known bugs for this driver. If you found a bug, please report it at INDI's bug tracking system at SourceForge. (You can log in with a variety of existing accounts, including Google, Yahoo and OpenID.)

]]> knro Sun, 03 Apr 2016 13:18:37 +0100 https://indilib.org/individuals/devices/cameras/moravian-ccds-filter-wheels.html I-Nova CCD https://indilib.org/individuals/devices/cameras/i-nova-ccd.html

Installation

I-Nova provides INDI drivers for I-Nova CCDs for 32 bit, 64 bit, and ARM architectures (For SBCs such as Raspberry PI) in their download page. After downloading the package appropriate for your architecture, install it using your favorite package manager. Only Debian packages are available which can be installed on any Debian derivative distribution such as Ubuntu or Raspian.

Features

The I-Nova driver support all of I-Nova CCDs. Subframing and binning is supported in software. Both gray scale and color modes are supported.

Operation

Once you're connected, you can capture images as FITS from the camera, or use video streaming if supported by your client.

Issues

Some users bug tracking system at SourceForge. (You can log in with a variety of existing accounts, including Google, Yahoo and OpenID.)

]]> knro Tue, 08 Mar 2016 10:10:00 +0100 https://indilib.org/individuals/devices/cameras/i-nova-ccd.html UVC Web Cameras https://indilib.org/individuals/devices/cameras/web-cameras.html

Installation

INDI can control any Video4Linux compatible web cam. This includes support for long exposures in addition to video streaming. Under Ubuntu, you can install the driver via:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:mutlaqja/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install libindi1

Features

The driver constructs all the controls provided by the underlying Video4Linux device such as brightness, gamma, contrast...etc in addition to any device-specific properties. Subframing and binning is supported in software. Both gray scale and color modes are supported. Pleas note that due to limitation in V4L2 framework, you cannot change the camera resolution unless you disconnect and reconnect again. Video streaming is supported as well as recording files in .SER format (Astronomy video format supported by many astronomy image processing software such as Registax and Siril). The driver also supports simple stacking.

Supported Cameras

 Any UVC class camera is supported. These include many general-purpose web cameras and astronomy web cameras such as:

  • NexImage
  • Logitech
  • SVBONY
  • Skyris
  • iOptron iPolar

Depending on the camera capabilities, the driver would generate controls for image adjustments, exposure, and resolution controls accordingly.

Operation

Once you're connected (default video port is /dev/video0), you can capture images as FITS from the camera, or use video streaming if supported by your client.

INDI will detect any extra options that your device may support and if found, INDI shall construct dynamic controls (knobs & switches) to control these features.

Connecting to Camera

If you plugin a UVC class camera, the operating system would automatically assign it a video port starting with /dev/video0 for the first camera, and /dev/video1 for the second camera and so on.

Therefore, if you have one camera, there is no further action required to connect to the camera.

Main Control Panel

main control

You can specify the exposure in seconds. Many UVC cameras have limited exposures up to 1 second usually. Unless you camera supports long exposures, you would be limited to subsecond exposures.

To simulate longer exposures, you can use Stacking as explained below.

Stacking:

  1. Connect camera and choose capture format (use YUV formats if any).
  2. Be sure to use GRAY images (linearization is not handled and crashes when used with COLOR images).
  3. You may start streaming to adjust focus (I usually augment brightness to 200 here). You may check quantization (dealing with limited range colorspace quantization) and linearization buttons in the Capture tab to see the effects of those processings.
  4. Readjust your brightness to a middle value (I use default 128) and take a series of stacked exposures to determine the best exposure time which will suit your needs. Before using a stack mode, be sure to check linearization in the Capture Tab. It is made internally but as linear/stacked exposures are 16bit depth, checking this button sets buffer sizes as required(not yet automatic). Using my setup I use 1.8 second exposure (yielding in ~15 stacked frames, startup time is quite high).
  5. You may take a dark frame now using the corresponding stack mode and your desired exposure time. Don't forget to close your tube, select Take dark and start an exposure. This will create a dark frame which will be subtracted to all subsequent stacked exposures. You may reset this dark frame or take another one as needed.
  6. Use additive stack mode to perform subsequent exposures.

Image Settings

image settings

Under image settings, you can select the Region-Of-Interest (ROI) or Frame for your image. Most clients (e.g. Ekos) already set this automatically for you, but it can be set here directly as well. By default, the image is sent uncompressed, you can select to compress it to test if capture or streaming performance can be improved. It is recommended to leave it to Raw.

The camera frame is transferred by default as a Gray scale image. To switch to RGB, click Color switch. Gray scale images would be more suitable for guiding applications.

Image Info

image info

The camera information is available under the Image Info Tab. It is very important to have all the information correct in the CCD Information property. Since UVC cameras do not share Pixel Size information (which is important to calculate the Field of View (FOV) of the camera), it is set manually depending on the detected camera model. If the camera model is recognized, it would be set automatically. Otherwise, you would get a message advising you to report the camera name and model to an INDI Forum thread so that the pixel information can be added to the driver in future driver releases. 

Streaming & Recording

Almost all UVC cameras support video streaming. The INDI driver supports recording to the following file formats:

  • SER: LuCam Recorder file. SER files are used for planetary, lunar, and solar captures. It a lossless format so it reserves all the information in the image as-is. To view SER files, it is recommended to use the excellent SER Player. Beware that SER file sizes can grow very big quite rapidly if the camera resolution and FPS are high.
  • OGV: OGV is a video container format which encodes video using Theora codecs. Unlike lossless SER, OGV Theora is a lossy format. Therefore, video frame details are inexact approximiation of the data in order to save size. This means you can get higher throughput (FPS) on limited hardware such as the raspberry pi, but with slightly less detail than a SER file.

You can think of SER vs OGV the same as PNG vs JPG. The former produces high quality images but very large file sizes, while the latter produces excellent images at a much lower size. The decision to use which format depends on your requirements and goals.

The Expose property controls the streaming exposure parameters:

  • Duration: Specifies duration for 1 frame which is by default 1/10 seconds or 100 milliseconds (10 FPS). Please note that this only works for cameras that explicitly support manual exposure settings. On many cameras it is not possible to control the exact video streaming exposure duration and this setting is completely ignored.
  • Divisor: If the frame rate is high and the network bandwidth is limited, you can opt to skip frames. By default it is set to 1 which means no frames are skipped. Setting it to 2 means every other frame is skipped (30 FPS would then become 15FPS). Setting to 3 means a frame is skipped for every 3 frames and so on.

Streaming

streaming

By clickong on Stream On, video streaming begins at the specified settings. If the image is gray scale, you can change it to Color in the Image Settings tab. The client must explicitly support video streaming, otherwise, you would end up with many files cluttering up the disk space. Supported clients include Ekos.

The Encoder property sets the video streaming encoding type. By default, all frames are sent as lossless RAW files. This reserves all the information, but at the expsene of lower FPS. On the otherhand, some cameras can support Motion JPEG video streaming which may significantly increases streaming performance.

Recording

Do not stream and record at the same time as this would significantly degrate the recording performance. Only record with streaming turned off

INDI supports recording video frames to the SER and OGV file formats. The recorded file name is dictacted by the Record File property.

  • Dir: Specify directory name. By default, it is stored in the user home directory with the prefix indi_D_ whereas D is the current date.
  • Name: Specificy file name. By default it is set as indi_record__T_ whereas T is the current time.

You can mix and match _D_ and _T_ in the file name template as desired.

Video recording can be specified using three options:

  1. Record On: This starts the video recording without any limits. To end recording, press Record Off.
  2. Record (Duration): Record video for this many seconds specificed in the Record Options property then stop.
  3. Record (Frames): Record video for this many frames specificed in the Record Options property then stop.

V4L2 Control

v4l2 control

Set image adjustments for the video. Streaming and recording must be OFF when making the adjustments otherwise the changes will fail.

Do not adjust the Absolute Exposure property unless you want to manually control exposure directly yourself overriding the exposure duration property.

V42L Options

v4l2 options

Exposure and Focus settings include White balance automatic adjustments.

Capture Options

 capture options

Adjust the capture format and resolution. After changing the Capture size, make sure to Reset the frame so that the new resolution size is reflected in the settings. You should only change these settings when streaming and recording are OFF.

Issues

Some users reported problems using the driver. If you found a bug, please report it at INDI's bug tracking system at SourceForge. (You can log in with a variety of existing accounts, including Google, Yahoo and OpenID.)

]]>
knro Sun, 22 Mar 2015 05:47:24 +0100 https://indilib.org/individuals/devices/cameras/web-cameras.html
Meade https://indilib.org/individuals/devices/cameras/meade-drivers.html

Installation

INDI can control the following Meade CCD drivers:

  • Meade DSI Pro I/II
  • Meade DSI IV Mono and Color
  • Meade LPI-GM and LPI-GC
  • Meade LPI-GM Advanced and LPI-GC Advanced

Under Ubuntu, you can install the driver via:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:mutlaqja/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install indi-dsi

Features

The driver support basic capture and adjustment of gain.

Operation

Once you're connected, you can capture images as FITS from the camera.

Issues

Some users reported problems using the driver. If you found a bug, please report it at INDI's bug tracking system at SourceForge. (You can log in with a variety of existing accounts, including Google, Yahoo and OpenID.)

]]>
knro Sat, 14 Feb 2015 21:53:50 +0100 https://indilib.org/individuals/devices/cameras/meade-drivers.html
ZWO ASI Cameras https://indilib.org/individuals/devices/cameras/zwo-optics-asi-cameras.html

Installation

The ASI CCD driver is available for download as a 3rd party driver from INDI's download page. Under Ubuntu, you can install it via:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:mutlaqja/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install indi-asi

Features

This is the INDI driver for ZWO ASI cameras. It supports all models. The camera must be powered on and connected before you run the INDI driver.

The INDI control panel exposes data associated with the device and permits parameters to be set. In normal operation, higher level software, such as EKOS, will control the ASI Camera, but this document will utilise the INDI control panel GUI to explain the available features.

Current features supported:

  • All ASI cameras including colour and monochrome cameras
  • Cooling support

Connectivity

ZWO ASI cameras come with USB connectors. You may connect the cameras and accessories either directly to the PC via USB, or via a ZWO Camera onboard USB hub (if any). However, as a general rule of thumb, direct connection to PC is always more stable than through a hub.

There are two ZWO camera drivers available:

  • ZWO CCD: This is the standard Multi-Camera driver. By specifying this, a Single driver is controlling all the cameras connected to the PC. It is the default and recommended driver.
  • ZWO Camera 1, 2, 3: These are experimental Single Camera Drivers. These drivers cannot be intermixed with ZWO CCD, only one of them may be used at a time. The driver were created to address issues with operating multiple cameras simultaneously. While the ZWO SDK claims that it can support multiple cameras from a single driver instance, in reality when multiple cameras are streaming and downloading at the same time, the SDK may lag in performance. For example, when the primary camera is downloading an image, the guide camera download may get slower as a result. Therefore, these drivers can be used by specifying the primary camera in the equipment profile as ZWO Camera 1. If a Guide camera also exists, select ZWO Camera 2 for it. Once the driver starts, you can assign which physical camera is assigned to the driver. By default, the driver picks the cameras in order (i.e. ZWO Camera 1 picks the first camera detected on USB, ZWO Camera 2 picks the second camera detected and so forth).

Operation

Main Control Tab

Screenshot_2021-09-04_at_22.58.50.png

The Main Control tab deals with the following parameters:

  • Connection: Displays and sets whether the driver is connected or not.
  • Exposure: The remaining time of the current exposure.
  • Abort Exposure: Allows the current exposure to be aborted.
  • Temperature: If the camera supports cooling, displays the current sensor temperature. In addition, a target temperature can be set.
  • Cooling Power: Displays the percentage of maximum power going to the camera.
  • Cooler: If the camera supports cooling, allows the cooler to be turned on / off.

The way cooling works is to set a target temperature. The cooler then adjusts the power to the cooler to firstly change the sensor temperature to the target temperature and then to maintain that temperature ongoing.

General Info Tab

Screenshot_2021-09-04_at_23.16.02.png

The General Info tab displays information about the driver:

  • Driver Info: Displays information about the driver.
  • FITS Header: Allows information to be added to the FITS header of captured images. This is typically useful in post processing of the images:
    • Observer: Who is taking the photograph.
    • Object: The target being photographed.
  • SDK Version:

The Options Tab

Screenshot_2021-09-04_at_23.16.19.png

The Options tab allows a number of parameters to be viewed and set.

  • Polling: Polling period in milliseconds.
  • Debug: Displays the debug status. Note that debug options are set in Ekos as described here. If set, Debug Levels, Logging Levels and Log Output details are displayed.
  • Simulation: Enable / disable simulation mode for testing purposes. In Simulation mode, parameters can be changed but not sent to the device.
  • Configuration: Manage the driver configuration file.
    • Load: Load the last saved settings.
    • Save: Save the driver settings.
    • Default: Restore default settings that were shipped with the driver.
    • Purge: Delete the configuration file.
  • Snoop devices: The driver supports the ability to listen to, or snoop, on parameters of other drivers. For example, the device could get the RA / Dec coordinates from the mount driver to add to the FITS header of the captured image.
  • Telescope: Whether the camera is the main imaging camera or a guidescope.
  • Upload: Parameters that define where images will be sent:
    • Client: Images are sent to the Indi server client.
    • Local: Images are stored locally on the device running Indiserver and if so, Upload Settings defines where the images will be stored.
    • Both: Images are stored locally and sent to the client.
  • Upload Settings: When images are to be stored locally, the directory to store them in.

Image Setting Tab

Screenshot_2021-09-04_at_23.16.34.png

The Image Settings tab allows parameters associated with the images taken by the device to be viewed and set:

  • Frame: Defines the Frame size of the image.
  • Binning: Defines the binning level.
  • Image: Save images either Compressed or Raw.
  • Frame Type: The type of frame, Light, Bias, Dark or Flat.
  • Frame Values: Allows changes made to the Frame size to be reset (to the sensor size).

Image Info Tab

Screenshot_2021-09-04_at_23.19.26.png

The Image Info tab displays information about the camera device:

  • CCD information:
    • Max Width / Height: The sensor size in pixels. This determines the maximum Frame size.
    • Pixel Size: Defines the pixel dimensions in microns.
    • Bits per pixel: Bit depth per pixel.
  • Image Data: Allows image data to be sent on the INDI Data Stream.
  • Bayer Info: This is only relevant to colour cameras:
    • X / Y Offset: X, Y offset for the matrix.
    • Filter: The Bayer matrix.
  • ADC Depth: Bit depth of the camera's Analog to Digital Converter (ADC).

Guider Control Tab

Screenshot_2021-09-04_at_23.17.03.png

The Guider Control tab supports parameters associated with guiding from the camera to the mount if the camera has an ST4 port.

  • Guide N/S: North / South pulse duration in milliseconds.
  • Guide E/W: East / West pulse duration in milliseconds.

Note that generally people guide from a Guiding application (like PHD2 or Ekos internal guider) directly to the mount in preference to using an ST4 cable from the camera to the mount. In this case these parameters can be ignored.

WCS Tab

Screenshot_2021-09-04_at_23.17.16.png

The WCS tab displays and sets parameters associated with the World Coordinate System (WCS).

  • WCS: Allows WCS to be enabled / disabled.
  • CCD FOV: Dispays the rotation angle of the CCD as determined during the most recent plate solve.

In general, a WCS allows mapping between celestial coordinates and an image. Specifically here, it allows a real world mapping of space in RA / Dec coordinates to an image in FITS format. The mapping goes both ways.

If enabled, the FITS viewer in Ekos will, after a successful initial plate solve, not only display the pixel x, y coordinates as the mouse is moved across the image, but also the cooresponding RA / Dec coordinates. In addition a request can be made from the FITS viewed to slew the telescope to centre the FOV where the mouse is located.

The CCD FOV Rotator, dispays the rotation angle of the CCD as determined during the most recent plate solve.

Streaming Tab

Screenshot_2021-09-04_at_23.18.07.png

The Streaming tab displays and set parameters associated with video streaming:

  • Video Stream: Either Stream On or Stream Off.
  • Expose: Parameters defining the current exposure length
  • FPS: Parameters defining the frames per second (FPS).
  • Video Record: How to take the video.
  • Record File: The directory and filename of the video.
  • Record Options:
    • Duration: The duration in seconds of the video.
    • Frames: The number of frames of the video.
  • Frame: The frame dimensions relative to the sensor size.
  • Encoder: Either Raw or MJPEG.
  • Format: Video format, either SER or OGV

Typically video format is used in planetary photography and not in DSO photography.

Controls Tab

Screenshot_2021-09-04_at_23.18.23.png

The Controls tab allows for a number of parameters to be adjusted:

  • Controls:
    • Gain: Camera gain.
    • Offset: Camera offset.
  • Bandwidth: The percentage of the USB bus speed the camera will try to use. The higher the value the faster data will be transferred from the camera over USB. However, if set too high, data transfer problems like dropped frames will result. The appropriate setting will depend upon whether USB 2 or 3 is used, how good the cable is and how good the receiving computer is at receiving the data.
  • Flip: Flip the image:
    • 0 - no flip
    • 1 - Flip the image horizontally.
    • 2 - Flip the image vertically.
    • 3 - Flip the image both horizontally and vertically.
  • AutoExpMaxGain: For automatic exposures, the maximum gain.
  • AutoExpMaxExpMs: For automation exposures, the maximum exposure in milliseconds.
  • AutoExposureTargetBrightness: For automatic exposures the target brightness.
  • HardwareBin: For cameras that support hardware binning. If you intend to use this please read the manual for your camera as there could be side effects, such as the camera changing the way the ADC is read to use a different bit depth.
  • HighSpeedMode: Some cameras have the ability to record ADC values in two modes. For example, the ASI1600mm pro can record in either 12bit ADC or 10bit ADC. Recording in 10bit mode loses bit depth but is faster. Setting HighSpeedMode allows the camera to record in 10bit mode. This feature would normally be used for planetary imaging when combined with a Format of 8bit in order to maximise the frames / second.
  • PatternAdjust:
  • Set Auto:
    • Gain: For Auto exposure automatically set the Gain.
    • Bandwidth: Automatically determine the Bandwidth parameter.
  • Format: Can be set to either Raw 8bit or Raw 16bit.
  • Blink: A blink inserts a delay between consecutive exposures.
    • Blinks before exposure: The number of blinks before the next exposure.
    • Blink duration: The duration in seconds of each blink.

For colour cameras the INDI control panel looks slightly different with additional parameters:

Screenshot_2021-09-04_at_23.20.15.png

Additional parameters:

  • WB_R / B: These parameters set the white balance of a colour image by adjusting the red channel (WB_R) and blue channel (WB_B) relative to the green channel. Usually ZWO recommend WB_R to be set to 52 and WB_B to 95 but consult your camera manual in case other values are recommended.
  • MonoBin: Whereas binning a colour camera will result in pixels of the same colour being combined, mono-binning will ignore the bayer pattern and bin in the same way a monochrome camera would, resulting in a monochrome image.
  • Format: In addition to Raw 8bit or Raw 16bit there are 2 additional options:
    • RGB 24: Store the red channel as 8bit, same from green and blue making 24 bits in total.
    • Luma:  The Luma format can be used for videos.

Issues

The current list of outstanding issues can be viewed at INDI's Github issues page. If you find an issue please report it on the Indilib forum and remember to include the logs (details on how to do this here). 

]]>
knro Fri, 02 Jan 2015 14:56:40 +0100 https://indilib.org/individuals/devices/cameras/zwo-optics-asi-cameras.html
Imaging Source CCD https://indilib.org/individuals/devices/cameras/imaging-source-ccd.html

Installation

INDI can control Imaging Source DMK CCDs via the Video4Linux driver. This includes support for long exposures in addition to video streaming. DMK CCDs are supported in INDI library v0.9.8 or later. Under Ubuntu, you can install the driver via:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:mutlaqja/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install libindi1

Features

The DMK driver provides all the Video4Linux control supported by the device such as brightness, contrast, gamma, ..etc. Subframing and binning is supported in software. Both gray scale and color modes are supported. Pleas note that due to limitation in V4L2 framework, you cannot change the camera resolution unless you disconnect and reconnect again.

Operation

Once you're connected, you can capture images as FITS from the camera, or use video streaming if supported by your client. INDI will detect any extra options that your device may support and if found, INDI shall construct dynamic controls (knobs & switches) to control these features.

Issues

Some users bug tracking system at SourceForge. (You can log in with a variety of existing accounts, including Google, Yahoo and OpenID.)

]]> knro Fri, 03 Jan 2014 10:10:17 +0100 https://indilib.org/individuals/devices/cameras/imaging-source-ccd.html Apogee CCD https://indilib.org/individuals/devices/cameras/apogee-ccd.html

Installation

INDI Apogee driver supports all lines of Apogee CCDs. The driver is available for download as a 3rd party driver from INDI's download page. Under Ubuntu, you can install it via:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:mutlaqja/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install indi-apogee

Features

The Apogee driver should support all features of the Alta and Aspen cameras including
  • USB or Ethernet connection
  • Temperature setpoint
  • Hardware binning
  • Frame sub-selection
  • Shutter capture mode; Dark, Bias, Light
  • Fan speed

Configuration

In order to use your Apogee camera in INDI the first step is to configure the CCD setting in a new profile or editing and existing one. Here is a new profile where we are selecting our CCD as an Apogee CCD.

config

Operation

After configuring your profile to use an Apogee camera, connecting to INDI will create new tabs for your camera that contain your camera's detailed specifics. In this case I have connected an Apogee Alta 8300 which uses a Kodak KAF-8300 chip via USB.

Main Control

maincontrol

Options

The Options tab contains various settings for simulation, default file locations, upload behavior and debugging.options

Image Settings

The Image Settings tab contains default settings for binning, sub framing, compression and frame type. Frame type controls the shutter such that you can take dark and bias frames with the shutter closed. All these options are available in the Ekos CCD application, you could change them here to establish different start up defaults.imagesettings

Image Info

The Image Info tab contains the read only details of the underlying CCD's dimensions, pixel size and bit depth.image info

Issues

There are no known bugs for this driver. If you found a bug, please report it at INDI's bug tracking system at SourceForge. (You can log in with a variety of existing accounts, including Google, Yahoo and OpenID.)

]]>
knro Wed, 30 Oct 2013 01:40:01 +0100 https://indilib.org/individuals/devices/cameras/apogee-ccd.html
FLI CCD & Filter Wheel & Focuser https://indilib.org/individuals/devices/cameras/fli-ccd-filter-wheel.html

Installation

INDI Finger Lakes Instruments (FLI) CCD, Filter Wheel, and Precision Digital Focuser driver is available for download as a 3rd party driver from INDI's download page. Under Ubuntu, you can install it via:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:mutlaqja/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install indi-fli

The driver install a Linux Kernel DKMS package which needs to be compiled successfully on the target system. If installation fails, the driver will not work

The driver package install three drivers:

  • CCD Driver: FLI CCD driver (indi_fli_ccd) for all FLI cameras.
  • Filter Wheel Driver: FLI CFW driver (indi_fli_wheel) for all FLI filter wheels.
  • Focuser Driver: FLI PDF driver (indi_fli_focus) for FLI Precision Digital Focuser.

Features

INDI FLI driver should be able to support all FLI family of CCDs. This includes temperature control, subframing..etc. The PDF driver is an absolute focuser driver that can be used in autofocusing applications.

Operation

Once you're connected, you can capture images as FITS from the camera, control temperature, and set image binning and frame subset. The driver will automatically upload these images to the client in FITS format.

Issues

There are no known bugs for this driver. If you found a bug, please report it at INDI's bug tracking system at SourceForge. (You can log in with a variety of existing accounts, including Google, Yahoo and OpenID.)

]]> knro Wed, 30 Oct 2013 01:33:20 +0100 https://indilib.org/individuals/devices/cameras/fli-ccd-filter-wheel.html SBIG CCD & Filter Wheel https://indilib.org/individuals/devices/cameras/sbig-ccd.html

Installation

INDI SBIG driver supports all of SBIG line of CCD cameras and filter wheels. Dual CCD cameras and sending guiding corrections via ST4 port is also supported.

The driver is available for download as a 3rd party driver from INDI's download page. Under Ubuntu, you can install it via:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:mutlaqja/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install indi-sbig

Features

INDI SBIG driver supports all SBIG family of CCDs/Guider and Filter wheels. Both USB & Parallel Port versions are supported. Mono and color CCDs are fully supported as well. INDI SBIG drivers are available for x86 and ARM architectures in both 32bit and 64bit. The installer auto detects your architecture and installs the appropriate driver accordingly.

Operation

Before connection, you verify the device port setting. If you are connected via USB, the port should be sbigusb0 or sbigusb1 (if you have more than one SBIG connected)...etc. For parallel port, the port should be sbiglpt0...etc.

Parallel port requires special setup and installing additional software. For more details please checkout this INDI forum post.

Once you're connected, you can capture images as FITS from the camera, control temperature, and set image binning and frame subset. The driver will automatically upload these images to the client in FITS format. If your camera is equipped with a filter wheel, you can control the filter wheel from the Filter Wheel tab where you can change filters and set their respective names.

INDI Control Panel


The drivers supports saving World-Coordinate-System (WCS) information in the FITS header. WCS enables you to view the image coordinates (RA/DEC) in several FITS editors. Furthermore, if WCS is enabled, you can click any where inside your image and slew to the mount to that particular point which greatly facilitates framing.

Fan and cooler control can be set in the Main Control tab. If you are using the CCD as a guider, clients such as PHD2 and Ekos, can be used to guide your mount.

For CCDs that come with a guide head, you can set the parameters of the guide head in the Guider Head tab including subframing and image type.

SBIG CCD in Ekos

Issues

The current SBIG Universal Library for Linux has a bug that prevents FAN control. SBIG was alerted to the issue but has no issued a fix yet.

The SBIG driver only support one-camera-per-driver, so if you have more than one SBIG camera, you need to start a dedicated instance to each camera.

The driver supports taking BIAS frames, but please note that the bias frame are captured using the minimum exposure time as supported by the camera and might not represent a valid bias frame. It depends on the minimum exposure time supported for each model.

If you controlling the cameras locally then the client should take of starting a separate instance for each driver. However, if you are operating the cameras remotely, then you need to start and rename each instance. For example, suppose you have an ST8 CCD as the primary camera and STi CCD for guider. To start separate instances for each driver remotely, start INDI server in FIFO mode:

mkfifo /tmp/indififo
indiserver -v -f /tmp/indififo

Then open a separate console, and then start each driver:

echo start indi_sbig_ccd -n \"ST8\" > /tmp/indififo
echo start indi_sbig_ccd -n \"STi\" > /tmp/indififo

If you are using Ekos, make sure to go to Ekos options in KStars settings, and set the CCD to "ST8" and Guider to "STi" before you try to connect.

There are no known bugs for this driver. If you found a bug, please report it at INDI's bug tracking system at SourceForge. (You can log in with a variety of existing accounts, including Google, Yahoo and OpenID.)

]]>
knro Wed, 30 Oct 2013 01:28:02 +0100 https://indilib.org/individuals/devices/cameras/sbig-ccd.html
Atik Cameras & Filter Wheels https://indilib.org/individuals/devices/cameras/atik-ccd.html

Installation

INDI Atik Driver currently supports all Atik cameras and filter wheels. There is a dedicated filter wheel driver for standalone filters, but the filter can be used within the camera driver.

Under Ubuntu, you can install the driver via:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:mutlaqja/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install indi-atik

Features

Main Control Panel

The driver supports capture, binning, and setting temperature (if there is cooler). Furthermore, the following is supported:

  • Guiding via ST4 cable.
  • Mono and Color camera supported.
  • Multiple cameras can be used at the same time.
  • Gain and Offset controls for Horizon camera.

Operation

Connecting to Atik camera

Simple connect the camera to the PC/SBC (Atikbase, StellarMate..etc) via USB. When connecting to an embedded device, make sure to use a 3A power adapter to minimize any issues that could be related to power.

General Info

General Info

This provides general information about the currently running driver and driver version.  It also lets you set the Observer and Object Information for the FITS Header.

Capture

To capture a signle-frame image, simple set the desired exposure time in seconds and click Set. After the capture is complete, it should be downloaded as a FITS image. If the camera is equipped with a cooler, target temperature can be set. To change the gain and offset (if supported), select a different image format in the Controls tab.

Options

Options

The Options tab contains settings for default file locations, upload behavior, and debugging. The polling period for this driver should be kept as is unless you need to reduce it for a specific reason.

  1. Debug: Toggle driver debug logging on/off
  2. Configuration: After changing driver settings, click Save to save the changes to the configuration file. The saved values should be used when starting the driver again in the future. The configuration file is saved to the user home directory under .indi directory in an XML file.(e.g. ~/.indi/camera_name.xml)
  3. Snoop Device: The camera driver can listen to properties defined in other drivers. This can be used to store the relevant information in the FITS header (like the mount's RA and DE coordinates). The respective drivers (Telescope, Focuser..etc) are usually set by the client, but can be set directly if desired.
  4. Rapid Guide: Rapid Guide uses internal algorithm to automataically select guide stars.
  5. Telescope: Toggle between Primary and Guide scope selection. This selection is required in order to calculate World-Coordinate-System (WCS) values like Field-Of-View (FOV). When WCS is enabled, the FITS header is populated with WCS keywords that enable clients to map the sources in the image to physical coordinates in the sky. Usually, you do not need to toggle this setting manually as it is usually set by the client automatically
  6. Upload: Selects how the captured image is saved/uploaded?
    • Client: The image is uploaded the client (i.e. Ekos or SkyCharts)
    • Local: The image is saved to local storage only.
    • Both: The image is saved to local storage and also uploaded to the client.
  7. Upload Settings: Sets the local desired directory and prefix used to save the image when either the Local or Both upload modes are active. The IMAGE_XXX is automatically replaced by the image name where the XXX is the image counter (i.e. M42_005.fits). The driver scan the local storage and increments the counter automatically when a new image is captured and stored.

Image Settings

Image Settings

In the Image Settings tab, you can configure the framing and binning of the captured image:

    • Frame: Set the desired Region-Of-Interest (ROI) by specifying the starting X and Y positions of the image and the desired width and height. It is recommended to set use even numbers only to enable binning if required. The ROI values are indenepdent of the binning used.
    • Binning: Set the desired binning. The usually supported

Image compression can be turned on in image settings to compress FITS images. This might require more processing but can reduce the size of the image by up to 70%. The uploaded image would have an extenstion of .fits.fz and it can be viewed in multiple clients like KStars.

The Frame Type property is used to mark the frame type in the FITS header which is useful information for some processing applications. If there an electronic or mechanical shutter, the driver closes it automatically when taking dark frames.

To restore the ROI to the default values, click on the Reset button.

Image Info

Image Info

The image info tab contains information on the resolution of the CCD (Maximum Width & Height) in addition to the pixel size in microns. If the camera supports Bayer mask, then the bayer filter and offset can be set here. These are usually set automatically by the driver, but can be adjusted manually if needed.

Issues

Atik filter wheel driver may crash under some environments due to missing depdencies. Please check INDI Issue #292 for details.

Issue Tracking System

      at Github.

]]>
polakovic Sat, 07 Sep 2013 20:59:35 +0100 https://indilib.org/individuals/devices/cameras/atik-ccd.html
Starlight Xpress CCD https://indilib.org/individuals/devices/cameras/starlight-xpress-ccd.html

Installation

INDI SX (indi-sx) driver is available for download as a 3rd party driver from INDI's download page. Under Ubuntu, you can install the driver via:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:mutlaqja/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install indi-sx

Features

The driver supports all Starlight Xpress CCDs, including autoguiders such as Lodestar. You can take exposures, set frame type and dimensions, and control temperature & cooler when applicable. The CCD must be powered and connected before you run the INDI server.

Operation

Once you're connected, you can select one or more physically connected camera, set cooler and temperature or control shutter (if applicable) and capture images as FITS.

Issues

There are no known bugs for this driver. If you found a bug, please report it at INDI's bug tracking system at SourceForge. (You can log in with a variety of existing accounts, including Google, Yahoo and OpenID.)

]]> knro Tue, 20 Nov 2012 21:29:16 +0100 https://indilib.org/individuals/devices/cameras/starlight-xpress-ccd.html QSI CCD & Filter Wheel https://indilib.org/individuals/devices/cameras/qsi-ccd.html

Installation

INDI QSI driver is available for download as a 3rd party driver from INDI's download page. Under Ubuntu, you can install it via:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:mutlaqja/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install indi-qsi

Features

INDI QSI should be able to support all Quantum Scientific Imaging (QSI) 500/600 family of cameras & filter wheels in addition to autoguiding support, whenever applicable.

Operation

Once you're connected, you can capture images as FITS from the camera, control temperature, and set image binning and frame subset. The driver will automatically upload these images to the client in FITS format. If your camera is equipped with a filter wheel, you can control the position of the wheels and designate a name to each filter. For CCDs equipped with Off-Axis Guider (OAG), the driver supports pulse guiding.

Issues

There are no known bugs for this driver. If you found a bug, please report it at INDI's bug tracking system at SourceForge. (You can log in with a variety of existing accounts, including Google, Yahoo and OpenID.)

]]> knro Wed, 14 Nov 2012 20:01:37 +0100 https://indilib.org/individuals/devices/cameras/qsi-ccd.html QHY CCD & Filter Wheel https://indilib.org/individuals/devices/cameras/qhy.html

Installation

INDI QHY currently supports all the QHYCCD cameras and filter wheels. Some of the older camera like QHY8 might have some issues, but all camera released from 2015 onwards are supported.

Both mono and color versions are supported.

Under Ubuntu, you can install the driver via:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:mutlaqja/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install indi-qhy

Features

The driver supports capture, binning, setting temperature, gain and offset adjustment, subframing, and control of internal QHY Color-Filter-Wheel (CFW). Moreover, guiding via ST4 port is also supported.

Main Control Panel

Temperature control is available if the camera is equipped with TEC cooler. Depending on the camera, TEC cooler can be controlled either automatically or manually.

If you directly set the temperature, the driver switches to automatic cooler mode where the cooler power is adjusted by the driver until the desired temperature is reached and kept. Some camera allow manual TEC control where you can directly set the TEC cooler power. In this manual mode, the cooler power is kept constant regardless of the temperature. Manual mode can be useful for advanced users who wishes to slow the cooling process for their camera since the QHY driver starts cooling to 100% when a lower temperature is requested.

You can also enable video streaming and save recording in LuCam SER format or OGV format. When enabling video streaming, the Rate Divisor property decides how many frames to skip before sending it to the client while the FPS sets the desired frames-per-second requested. When tested on embedeed platforms like Raspbeerry PI, the frames due to USB 2.0 limitations are in the range of 12-18 FPS.

The driver can detect and run multiple devices, therefore you only need to run one instance of the driver even if you have multiple CCDs connected. i.e.

indiserver -v indi_qhy_ccd

Operation

Streaming

Once you're connected, you can capture images as FITS from the camera. You can also adjust gain and set temperature if cooling is supported. Images can be downloaded to the client or saved directly to the hard disk. If the CCD has an ST4 port, it should supported guiding via any INDI-compatible guiding application such as Ekos/PHD2.

Amp Glow Control

Some cameras provide a toggle to enable or disable Amp-glow control. However, for most cameras, this setting is already enabled by default in the camera and no control is exposed. That is, amp-glow control is enabled all the time.

Issues

There are no known bugs for this driver. If you found a bug, please report it at INDI's bug tracking system at SourceForge. (You can log in with a variety of existing accounts, including Google, Yahoo and OpenID.)

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knro Wed, 14 Nov 2012 19:56:42 +0100 https://indilib.org/individuals/devices/cameras/qhy.html
DSLR Cameras https://indilib.org/individuals/devices/cameras/gphoto.html

Installation

INDI can control most cameras supported by GPhoto library using the INDI gphoto driver. This includes most DSLRs cameras. Make sure the OS does not mount the camera as a disk-drive as this would prevent the driver from communicating with the camera.

INDI should be able to support any camera supported by libgphoto2, including Canon, Nikon, Pentax, Sony, & Fuji DSLRs. Once you connect, you will be provided with a standard set of controls supported by INDI, as well as full exposure to all parameters supported by libgphoto. You must set your camera to Manual/Bulb mode in order to get full control via INDI. This can be done by turing the rotatory controls until they point at BULB or MANUAL mode.

There are two types of drivers available:

  1. GPhoto Driver: This is the generic driver that works with all camera. The driver name is always "GPhoto CCD" and it can connect only to a single camera at a time. The executable is indi_gphoto_ccd.
  2. DSLR-specific drivers. These drivers can connect to multiple cameras of the same type (i.e. two Canon cameras) and driver name would reflect the detected camera name.
    1. Canon: indi_canon_ccd
    2. Nikon: indi_nikon_ccd
    3. Pentax: indi_pentax_ccd
    4. Sony: indi_sony_ccd
    5. Fuji: indi_fuji_ccd

Besides the differences outlined above, the drivers are idential in every other way.

On the first time you use the driver, you must set the required CCD Information specific to your DSLR model. Your client should provide you with a list of drivers you can connect with.

Under Ubuntu, you can install the driver via:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:mutlaqja/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install indi-gphoto

Features

Compression

The gphoto driver provides you with an option to compress incoming streams and images. The compression option enables you to balance between network load vs. CPU load.

If compression is enabled, network load is reduced (If your camera is not remote, network load is negligible), but CPU load is increased. If compression is disabled, network load is increased, but CPU load is decreased. The compression is disabled by default. The compress only applies to images captured in FITS format and it would produce a .fits.fz compressed file which can save up to 70% of the image size.

External Shutter Release

If your camera uses an external shutter release cable, make sure to indicate the port of the shutter release USB cable (usually /dev/ttyUSB0) in the Main Control tab of the GPhoto driver before connecting to the camera.

When using external shutter release cable, you must use the GPhoto generic driver and not a camera-specific driver (e.g. Nikon) as only the GPhoto generic driver would work with external shutter release cables.

Additionaly, users may employ DSUSB/DSUSB2 from Shoestring Astronomy in order to control the shutter. Before you connect, the port field must be set to DSUSB.

dsusb

Auto Noise Reduction in some camera models (e.g. Canon 350D) can make exposure times take twice their expected duration. Turn off auto noise reduction in camera settings (Custom Functions #3).

Image Format

By default, the transfer format is set to FITS. Images from the camera can be transferred in native (e.g. CR2, NEF..etc) without converting to FITS first. This can reduce latency and CPU usage on the server. Furthermore, FITS images can be larger in size compared to native formats such as RAW/JPEG. The FITS images are transferred as Bayered frames and it is the clients responsiblity to debayer the image upon reception.

Raw images from the camera will be in whatever mode your camera is set to (normally either RAW or JPEG). When using RAW images, it is the client software's responsibility to convert these to a usable format via libraw or equivalent. You cannot use RAW+JPG mode it is not supported by the driver, you must pick a single format.

To retain Image Format settings between sessions, set the desired Image Format then save the driver configuration under the Options tab

Image Info

The image info tab contains information on the resolution of the CCD (Maximum Width & Height) in addition to the pixel size in microns. Make sure that the information in this tab is correct and update it accordingly. By default, all values are set to zero, please update it to fit your CCD chip specification. The resolution value will change automatically after each exposure in case the image resolution is changed due to selecting a differently sized image from the drop down list.

Some clients like KStars will ask you to specify the maximum resolution of your camera and would limit the camera's image to this specific size.

Since GPhoto tends to produce different image sizes for CR2 vs. FITS image. it is critical to use only one method when imaging. You cannot take CR2 flats and mix them with FITS Lights. All images in a session must be all CR2 or all FITS.

Mirror Lock

GPhoto driver supports mirror lock in order to reduce mechanical vibrations. It's currently implemented only for Canon DSLR. You must Enable Mirror Lock feature in your camera before you can use this feature in the driver.

To enable it in your camera (usually in the last tab, Custom Functions, called Mirror Lockup). Then set the serial port for shooter, and open the gphoto camera as usual. When a serial port is set, now a new setting appears on connection: "Mirror lock", with a default value of 0.

Set it to a reasonable value (2 seconds will do). Now when shooting, you'll hear two "clicks" from your camera instead of the usual one: the first pulls up the mirror, the second (after the number of seconds you specified) opens the shutter and starts the exposure.

Saving locally

You can opt to save all captured images to the local storage. This is the local storage of the device running the INDI GPhoto driver and not the SD Card. Settings for saving to SD card is also available. Under Options tab you can select the Upload mode:

  • Client: Upload image to client.
  • Locally: Store image on the machine where the driver is running. Do not update to client.
  • Both: Store image on local storage and upload to client

Live Preview

GPhoto driver support live video preview mode if supported by your camera. KStars is the only client currently that supports live preview mode. To Enable, click on the Enable Preview in the driver's main control tab.

The Live View supports zoom levels of 5x and 10x respectively.

Focusing

If supported by your camera, you can control Focus In and Focus Out with speed settings under the Focus tab of the GPhoto driver. You can autofocus with any client that supports INDI auto-focusing.

Operation

Once you're connected, you can capture images as FITS or RAW from the camera. When using Ekos, you can configure what DSLR format is set to in capture module. Ekos automatically switches format to FITS when using Focus, Guide, and Align modules.

When using the driver for the first time, you must set the CCD Information specific to your DSLR model. Initially, all parameters are set to zero as shown below.

Fill and set the required parameters. For example, for Canon 600d. The following values were used. Please note that Bits Per Pixel is always set to multiples of 8 regardless of the DSLR's bit depth. This is because FITS format are transferred in multiples of 8.

After setting the parameters, you should save the parameters to the DSLR's configuration file so that they are loaded in future sessions.

INDI will detect any extra options that your device may support and if found, INDI shall construct dynamic controls (knobs & switches) to control these features.

Nikon

Nikon is officially supported under GPhoto but the level of features supported is less than that of Canon cameras. Noise Reduction must be turned off. For bulb exposures to work, you must set Capture Target to SD Card. By default it is set to Internal RAM which is problematic in Nikon cameras. Please save configuration after setting capture target to SD Card. If all fails, resetting the camera to Factory Defaults might help some users.

image settings

There are three settings for the SD card image handling:

  1. Save: The image is downloaded to INDI and also saved to the DSLR camera internal storage.
  2. Delete: The image is downloaded to INDI and deleted from the DSLR camera internal storage.
  3. Ignore: The image is saved to the DSLR camera internal storage and never downloaded at all. So no images are sent back to the client or saved on the machine local storage, it is only saved in the camera. This option might be useful to expedite the capture process.

Canon 10D, 20D, 350D

normal modeSome of the older Canon Cameras can only be operated in NORMAL mode. Adjust the camera communication settings menu and set it to Normal mode. When the camera is connected, it should appear like Canon EOS 20D (Normal Mode). If the camera shows in PTP mode then it cannot be used in the driver.

Canon 1DX

The following settings would make capture possible with Canon 1DX camera according to this INDI Forum Thread:

Main Control:
Mirror Lockup = 0 (It I set the mirror lockup on it would fail, and I would need to reboot the system and restart KStars on the Mac)

Options:
Force Bulb = OFF (Camera was set to Bulb mode, if I used Force Bulb it would fail)

Image Settings:
Capture Format = RAW
Transfer Format - Native
Capture Target = SD Card (I think this one was the key in the Image Settings tab)
SD Image = Delete

Canon EOS Ra, R5, R6

Camera produces CR3 formatted RAW images which are currently only supported on StellarMate. In case you run into capture issues, make sure to enable "Release shutter w/o lens" in C.Fn5

Fuji X-T3

Fuji cameras are supported with some limitations. Checkout the detailed HOWTO for operating Fuji X-T3 and X-T4 cameras.

Fuji X-T1

When using X-T1 with Remote Serial Shutter, please checkout this detailed HOWTO for operating the camera in BULB mode.

Sony A7III

The INDI Sony driver is reported to work well with the Sony A7III camera.

  • Set the camera format to RAW.
  • Set the camera capture mode to BULB.
  • In the INDI driver options, Force BULB must be enabled at all times even when taking short exposures.
  • If the ISO setting is set to AUTO then the camera will capture images at ISO 80, so it's recommended to specify exactly the desired ISO setting explicitly.

Here are some in-camera settings that might be helpful:

Camera --> Controls --> M modus --> AF set to AEF

Camera --> Settings --> Camera Tab > 4 > ISO set to 100
Camera --> Settings --> Camera Tab > 4 > DRO/Auto HDR set to "Off"
Camera --> Settings --> Camera Tab > 5 > Long Exposure Noise Reduction (NR) set to "Off"

Check the there are no features in the camera that prevents the camera from going to Bulb mode (e.g. Silent Shutter).

Olympus OM-D E-M1

Even if you set the mode to BULB, the camera automatically switches to M mode and the exposure is set to 1-second automatically after the first capture. To resolve this, set the mode back to BULB after the first capture and subsequent captures should be fine.

Pentax

There are two INDI drivers for Pentax cameras, both with limitations. The GPhoto-based driver is called Pentax Legacy, while the native driver is called Pentax Native. The native drivers offers more functionality over the generic GPhoto-based counterpart.

For some cameras, setting to BULB mode does not work and you must switch it to MANUAL.

Exposure Modes

The driver offers two destinct methods of taking an exposure. Bulb (B) and Manual (M) modes

The first one utilizes the camera's internal list of predefined exposure times (exposure widget: shutterspeed). In this mode, when an exposure is triggered, INDI compares the desired exposure time to the shutter speeds offered by the camera. If it finds an exact match, it fires the shot. If it does not find an exact match, it selects the closest one (if considered close enough, otherwise INDI will fall back to B mode which does not work with these cameras) and fires the shot. For example, a Canon 5D Mk2 does not offer 1/100s. When a 0.01s exposure is requested, INDI triggers a 1/90s exposure. The fits header will show EXPTIME 0.0111111s in this case.

The second method utilizes the camera's bulb mode (bulb widget: eosremoterelease). In this mode INDI opens the shutter, starts a countdown, and as soon as zero has been reached, it closes the shutter.

The FORCE BULB (under Options tab) setting tells INDI whether to look for camera internal shutter speeds first, or use bulb mode right away.

Generally, bulb mode works well for all exposure times except short ones and manual mode works perfectly for all shutter speeds that are predefined in the camera. Since very short exposures can't be produced precise enough in B-mode, it is a good idea to use bulb mode for exposures of 1s or more, and manual mode for exposures of less than 1s.

Unfortunately, cameras like the Canon 5D and 6D have a separate B-mode (selectable via main dial) whereas for most other Canon cameras "B" is just one of many shutter speeds within "M" mode. What it means is INDI cannot toggle between Manual and Bulb with cameras like the 5D and 6D. What's more, INDI reads the list of available shutter speeds from the camera at startup, when the initial connection is made. If the 5D/6D's main dial is set to "B" at that time though, the list contains "bulb" only. In order for INDI to obtain the full list of available shutter speeds, the camera must be set to "M" when the connection is made.

Therefore, as a general rule of thumb:

  • Set Force Bulb ON while in B-mode for exposures of 1s or more.
  • Set Force Bulb OFF while in M-mode for exposures <1s

When other combinations are attempted, it results in undefined behavior. The results depend upon two things:

  1. The exposure time set in INDI.
  2. The shutter speed that is set in the camera's sub-dial.

For example, if:

  1. The Camera is set to M-mode but
  2. Force Bulb is ON,
  3. The exposure time selected in INDI is 1s and
  4. The shutter speed in the camera's sub-dial is set to 1/10s

This wold lead to 3 exposures of 1/10s each (the camera keeps firing 1/10s shots for as long as INDI runs its count down), the first two triggering error messages and the last one resulting in a downloaed image.

For users with dual M/B rotary settings, make sure the camera's main dial is set to "M" when INDI is started. Secondly, for exposures of 1s or more, use the "Force Bulb = ON" / "B"-mode combination and for exposures of less than 1s use "Force Bulb = OFF" / "M"-mode.

Flat Frames

Taking flats requires particular attention. Users can set an ADU level and some clients (e.g. Ekos) will try to get there by taking test shots and adjusting exposure times until the desired ADU level is reached within a certain tolerance that can be set by the user, too. Some flat boxes feature a (too) bright light source which in turn requires rather short exposure times in order to achieve a suited ADU level. So the "B"-mode camera user might want to set the main dial to "M" and switch "Force Bulb" OFF. Let's assume the target ADU level is set to 30.000, tolerance is set to 1000. INDI takes a 1/10s shot which delivers 2400 ADUs. The next shot is taken at 1s which delivers 24000 ADUs. Now, in order to get to 30.000, the exposure time would have to be increased by 25% (to 1.25s). However, the camera does not offer a shutter speed of 1.25s. The two neighbouring shutter speeds (1s and 1.5s) cannot deliver the targeted ADU level within the given tolerance. This attempt to take flats will fail. With other cameras, INDI would automatically switch over to B mode, start a 1.25s countdown and succeed. B-mode cameras require the user to manually intervene. Two possibilities:

  1. Increase tolerance, in this case to 7000, for instance. The 1s shot will be good enough, 1s be used for all flat frames.
  2. Set camera to B, set Force Bulb to ON, set exposure to 1.25 and start again.

Troubleshooting

In case the camera fails to connect or capture, please make sure of the following:

  • Make sure the battery in the camera is full. If using a dummy battery, ensure that the power supply is sufficient in terms of voltage and current capacitiy. Otherwise, the camera may behave erratically.
  • Make sure the SD card in the camera has enough space.
  • Make sure camera is set to Bulb/Manual mode. You might need to rotate the dial to Bulb or Manual and then adjust camera settings to enable BULB mode.
  • Turn off any power-saving feature of the camera that might cause it to hibernate or sleep. Some cameras support adjustable inactivity timers before automatically turning off. Set such timers to 15 minutes or more.
  • Try a different USB cable.
  • Try a different USB port.
  • Turn off Noise Reduction settings in the camera.
  • Turn off mirror lock in the camera settings.

Issues

Please check the INDI Forum DSLRs FAQs before submitting any support request. If you found a bug, please report it at INDI's issue tracking system at Github.

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knro Wed, 14 Nov 2012 19:48:12 +0100 https://indilib.org/individuals/devices/cameras/gphoto.html