Milosz Wasilewski replied to the topic 'Multiple QHY cameras' in the forum. 3 years ago

I suspect USB driver in RPi kernel. It might be more than that. Firstly with QHY163 camera it won't work with USB3 controller on RPi4. I didn't debug that so I don't know what the issue might be. If I force it to use USB2 mode (by either plugging to USB2 socket or using USB2 hub) I'm able to connect to the camera. It doesn't work always though. I noticed that I'm getting the best result if I connect to the camera while there is no power supply connected to it. This prevents the camera from cooling, but I can connect the power after I connect from RPi with INDI. Then I'm able to take a single frame and on the next attempt some error happens. I tried upgrading to the latest and greatest version of INDI and driver, but this just changed the error message I got. In the end I gave up with RPi4 and went with my laptop and powered USB2 hub. This setup works pretty consistently. I guess the next step will be replacing RPi4 with some cheap intel NUC so I don't have to carry the laptop to the mount.

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This sounds weird. fxload is only used to deliver firmware blob to the camera on startup. I'm on Ubuntu focal and INDI driver for QHY worked out of the box without updating fxload. I'm using the one from distro:
fxload 1.0~201712271246~ubuntu18.04.1 amd64
Which distro are you using? Also which architecture? I had issues trying to use the camera on RPi4.

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Milosz Wasilewski replied to the topic 'Multiple QHY cameras' in the forum. 3 years ago

I'm using QHY163 and old QHY5 (first version) on a single INDI driver and they work (mostly). Unfortunately this setup doesn't work on RaspberryPi 3 or 4. I only managed to get it working on intel based laptop. Please note I didn't yet try to use both cameras at the same time. I can only confirm that I can connect to both from KStars and take a single frame from each.

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Milosz Wasilewski replied to the topic 'QHY163 in INDI' in the forum. 6 years ago

It looks I was wrong. There was some work going on on the Linux drivers. Please check this thread:
qhyccd.com/bbs/index.php?topic=5958.0
and this repo:
github.com/qhyccd-lzr/QHYCCD_Linux_New

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Milosz Wasilewski replied to the topic 'QHY163 in INDI' in the forum. 6 years ago

Sorry guys, no progress for a very long time. Some other tasks took priority and this work was postponed. I'll update this thread when I get some progress. It seems that QHY also didn't come up with any linux driver. Some version of firmware is available from github. It can probably be also extracted from windows drivers. When I have a few spare cycles I'll try to ping QHY again for their help.

Cheers,
milosz

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This is exactly the point. My feeling is there are 2 options:
a) they don't know/understand this is possible (maintaining the driver in the open)
b) they think there is some IP in the driver.

I really hope it's a) and QHy can be persuaded to open their USB drivers. I hope I'm not overoptimistic :)

milosz

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I don't agree it's useless. It's a step in the good direction. I can spend months trying to reverse engineer the protocol and release the sources. With protocol in hand the route is a bit shorter. In the current form NDA is too restrictive. It doesn't even allow to release binaries. I'm trying to convince QHY that this isn't the right way to go. Let's keep fingers crossed they release their protocol code in the open :)

milosz

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Looks like sth is going to change. QHY started some sort of 'developers programme':
qhyccd.com/bbs/index.php?topic=5602.0
I'm planning to apply shortly :)

milosz

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knro wrote:

I take it current QHY driver no not work? You got logs from them?

Yep, they don't work. I'll try to collect some logs and post them here. It seems that the current firmware is correct though (the one from SDK). At least it loads properly and re-enumerates the camera as expected.

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Does anyone know if there is some working driver for new QHY cameras (USB3 series)? I had some email exchange with Lee from QHY, but he stopped replying around a month ago. I went as far as loading firmware to QHY163. The SDK from github seems to be broken. Does anyone have any more luck with these cameras in Linux?

milosz

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Milosz Wasilewski replied to the topic 'QHY163 in INDI' in the forum. 7 years ago

Looks like .img files that are shipped for new (3rd gen) QHY cameras are much bigger than .hex files that are used with older ones. So I don't think the new cameras use the same Cypress chip for USB communication. Let's wait what QHY replies.

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Milosz Wasilewski replied to the topic 'QHY163 in INDI' in the forum. 7 years ago

Do you think the rest of the code will work? I guess loading firmware is not the last step. I contacted QHY about that. The camera is under beta testing so I can't disclose bugs openly if sth bad happens. Let's see what QHY says. I really don't want to brick the camera :)

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