Sundewaholic replied to the topic 'Astroberry + QHYCCD users' in the forum. 4 years ago

Maxchess wrote: Main camera is ZWO294MC so guess I dodged that issue, also use other ZWOs and DSLR.


I guess you can leave all USB ports plugged in and run ekos / indi without any problems.

For QHY cameras, I have to make sure the QHY camera won't confuse with the other one by plugging in one at a time after certain settings in ekos, but I get some other error with the main camera that I'm unable to resolve.

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Sundewaholic replied to the topic 'Astroberry + QHYCCD users' in the forum. 4 years ago

Maxchess wrote: In answer to the question "Is there actually any success story of a fully stable astroberry / ekos/ inid setup with QHYCCD imaging equipment?" Not sure if it helps but I have a very stable setup running the QHY5L-II M as guide camera on Indi/Ekos on a Rock64, although I built it using the simple download Ubuntu instructions at: indilib.org/download/ubuntu.html . I have been using the setup with changes of equipment for about 2 years. Some learning: use a well powered USB hub; make sure the 12v supply has enough power, I use RoyPow 12V 10A Adapter, wires beats wireless, my Rock64 has a wired ethernet connection. One of the challenges of Indi/Ekos is that there are so many options & settings and it takes some digging to get them right. So recently I found Astrometry stopped solving when I changed spacing on a scope and it took me a while to find the setting to get it to forget the old "FOV". But when then once I have a settled config everything works wonderfully.


What's your main camera? Is it also a QHY CCD?

One of the problems I'm facing is the QHY cameras can't live together with astroberry.

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Sundewaholic replied to the topic 'Astroberry + QHYCCD users' in the forum. 4 years ago

El Corazon wrote: That's what the forum is for. Indi/Ekos is one of the best astrophotograpyhy suites around. It is still on the road to perfection, but it is lightyears ahead of where it was when I first joind 30 months ago.

So be patient!


I tried to brainwash myself this is just part of the fun...

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Sundewaholic replied to the topic 'Astroberry + QHYCCD users' in the forum. 4 years ago

colgs3b wrote: I don't know what cameras you are using, but I cannot recall ever having a connection issue with my QHY5L-II-M and Ekos. The 163M took longer, but as I alluded to, the QHY drivers took a long time to mature across all platforms. I do seem to recall someone having an issue with other combinations of QHY cameras. Yeah, I have mostly stuck with Indi/Ekos to have a compact solution while travelling with my gear, and I use an iPad Mini to do most of the control.
A few people have attributed connection issues to underpowered PSUs, so you might see if you can give it some more juice. There was a recommendation for a while to put the cameras through a dedicated, powered USB hub. While using my Rock64 SBC, I used to do that (Sabrent USB 3 , 7 port hub).
If you want to troubleshoot it, there are people here to assist. The output of "lsusb" and "dmesg" is often useful to know if the computer is even recognizing the devices.
Regards.


Re the post below, I'm still unable to get everything resolved and when I switch the pi on again the other day with the QHY cameras connected, the keyboard and mouse USB ports refused to join the debugging game... and hence... game over... and lets get back to the real hobby - imaging, not debugging.
indilib.org/forum/astroberry/6827-astrob...kstars-and-indi.html

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Sundewaholic replied to the topic 'Astroberry + QHYCCD users' in the forum. 4 years ago

The more I read this forum the less confidence I have to get all the problems resolved and ensure my setup is working perfectly in rare clear sky in my location.
I've decided to temporarily fall back to windows / ASCOM based system, at least it works almost all the time for me.
Not saying astroberry/ INDI is no good, it does offer a free remote solution to many, but I can't even get to the point which I can get both my QHY main and QHY guide cameras connected so maybe this version is not for me. I will wait for the late version.
Hope to see more development on it.

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Sundewaholic created a new topic ' Astroberry + QHYCCD users' in the forum. 4 years ago

Is there actually any success story of a fully stable astroberry / ekos/ inid setup with your QHYCCD imaging equipment?

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Kaczorek wrote: I'm glad there is some progress on your side.
Regarding your questions...
1) Please try the main camera capture without connecting other cameras. Also make sure that you select proper camera i Ekos CCD tab when other cameras are connected.
2) You can go both ways i.e. connecting camera as INDI driver and use INDI CCD in PHD2 or connect camera directly in PHD2. The former should work, but it's not that effective because INDI is engaged in capturing and transferring images to PHD2, which in turn communicates with KStars/Ekos with guiding corrections. This approach makes sense for cameras that are not supported by PHD2 but are supported by INDI. Otherwise use direct PHD2 connection.


Thanks Kzczorek.
I can capture images and store them in the target directory, but once I execute my step 3) "Disconnect the guide camera (QHY5L-ii-m) in the INDI Control Panel.", which is essential for letting PHD2 to have the guide cam, it also disconnected the image transfer of the main camera. Re the screen dump below, clicking the "Yes" seems can't enable the image transfer. No preview showed on screen and no image are stored in the target directory.
I have also tried to disconnect and connect the main camera to see if the image transfer works, it doesn't! Any idea, many thanks!



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Thanks Kaczorek, following your guidelines the connections work now. It was really frustration as I thought the problem was due to a combination of various problems - the USB3.0 / 2.4G wifi interference, QHY5L-ii-m driver bugs/ not up to date, etc.. those sort of things that need some complicated Linux configurations to fix it, and it seems many people has similar experience, lucky me my problem can be fixed due to wrong profile configuration/ connection sequence.

Ref to your guidelines, here are the exact steps that made my equipment work (mostly):

0) Plug in the main camera (QHY168C) and guide camera (QHY5L-ii-m) only to the pi, USB 2.0 or 3.0 or via a USB hub doesn't really matter! Unplug the QHY PoleMaster.
1) Open Ekos, set the Guiding field as PHD2 and Guider field as "BLANK" in the profile.
2) Start INDI server.
3) Disconnect the guide camera (QHY5L-ii-m) in the INDI Control Panel.
4) Open PHD2, set Camera as QHY Camera.
5) In the KStars guide module, click the "Connect" button.
6) Open a terminal, start PoleMaster (sudo PoleMaster).
7) Happy days? Not yet - GetQHYCCDSingleFrame error (-1)

Sorry I have the below questions also, appreciate you can let me know too:

- Following your guidelines, everything can be connected, so I tried to test the main camera by taking an exposure (the camera icon - Capture a Preview), but I get this error -> GetQHYCCDSingleFrame, re the screen shot, any clue about it?
- I've also come across some instruction that we can set the Guilder field as the guide camera (QHY CCD) in the Ekos profile, and in the PHD2, select "INDI camera"... once started PHD2 it will connect to the guide camera. I've also tried this configurations, it did attempt to connect but failed at the end. Any reason this is not suggested/ not working?



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Ah, I'm quite new to astroberry/ raspberry, didn't know you are the author of astroberry, and thanks for the info!

The problem I have is that I never be able to connect all my 3 QHY cameras (QHY168C, QHY5L-ii-m and PoleMaster) in Astroberry's Ekos/ Indi, could be related to the USB connections or the drivers (or something else!). I'm advised to try purging KStars and INDI and install the code from Jasem Mutlaq in Launchpad, perhaps the advisor uses Ubuntu Mate, I'm not sure, but it seems to be working in his case.

I think I have slightly further narrowed down the problem I have. I reinstalled astroberry (the 5th times, and without the polemaster installed), PHD2 seems work fine with QHY5-ii-m, but whenever I start running the Kstars and INDI server, PHD2 can't get any more frames from QHY5L-ii-m, the screen stuck. Is the QHY168C tried to compete with the USB port numbers?

See screen dump for the dmesg when I start the KStars/ INDI server . How often the INDI libs are updated for the astroberry (Raspbian) version? Jasem does have 4 updated QHY libs files, not sure what they are used for but when someone like me really struggling with the problem for quite a period I don't really mind to replace astroberry with Ubuntu Mate. What's your advice?



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I guess it is a typo in the indi website as the changelog of github does said it is based on Raspbian Buster Desktop
indilib.org/devices/rasbperry-pi/astroberry-server.html

github.com/rkaczorek/astroberry-server/blob/master/Changelog

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The following 2 links said it runs on Raspbian Buster Desktop
github.com/rkaczorek/astroberry-server/blob/master/README.md
www.astroberry.io/

But this link said its on Ubuntu Mate 16.04 Desktop
indilib.org/devices/rasbperry-pi/astroberry-server.html

I'm confuse!


Are they actually the same?

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Thanks for your reply Kaczorek. I thought astroberry is based on Ubuntu mate, would you please share me a link saying it is based on Raspbian?

The problems are related USB connections to QHY cameras, I can’t get all connected to Kstars/ INDI at the same time (qhy168c, qhy5l-ii-m, polemaster)

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Thanks Karma. I did a bit of research to understand aptitude and apt-get... its true that aptitude doesn't come with the 2.0.1.

I executed the following revised commands but again, nothing happened. Kstars and INDI server can still be run! Any clue?

sudo apt-get purge indi-bin libindi-data libindi1 libindidriver1
sudo apt-get purge kstars kstars-data
sudo apt-add-repository ppa:mutlaqja/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install indi-full kstars-bleeding

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To supplement, no error returned after each command , except the "add-repository" command, the rest basically took no time to complete, seems nothing actually happened.

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I'm trying to replace the kstars and INDI versions that come with Astroberry 2.0.1 with the stable build of Jasem, which contains update of 4 QHY related files (as you may notice I have been struggling to fix the QHY cameras USB connection problems):

launchpad.net/~mutlaqja/+archive/ubuntu/...5&memo=150&start=150
indi-qhy 2.6~202004201859~ubuntu18.04.1 Jasem Mutlaq (2020-04-20)
indi-qhy 2.6~202004201859~ubuntu16.04.1 Jasem Mutlaq (2020-04-20)
indi-qhy 2.6~202004201858~ubuntu20.04.1 Jasem Mutlaq (2020-04-20)
indi-qhy 2.6~202004201857~ubuntu19.10.1 Jasem Mutlaq (2020-04-20)

I executed the following commands but it seems both kstars and indi are not affected after the "purge" commands, I can still open them up. Any Linux guru know what the problem is?

sudo aptitude purge indi-bin libindi-data libindi1 libindidriver1
sudo aptitude purge kstars kstars-data

sudo apt-add-repository ppa:mutlaqja/ppa
sudo aptitude update

sudo aptitude install indi-full kstars-bleeding

baheyeldin.com/astronomy/installing-late...ary-ubuntu-1604.html

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