Hello
I've just started testing Kstars 3.6.8 on a macbook air, Pi4 setup. You may have seen my tinkering with the K20D on a similar setup. I made sure the macbook version of kstars matched the version on the Pi4. I'm using the native pentax driver. Astrotracer is on and buld settings are capture and hold.
Running up the connection I connect and then get 2 warnings about ISO and exposure compensation. Then a red error (see below).



At this stage I'm able to update ISO and switch between native and fits. If I set a 1 sec or 10 sec exposure, the shutter opens for the required time, closes and then I wait...for eternity it seems. To close, I abort the capture (this hangs the camera needing a battery reset). for log file trace see below. Any ideas what to do next?

ISTR that the K3 and K3ii don't work in bulb mode with the native driver and the mode has to be set to manual. That means astrotracer off, but I would assume astrotracer would compete with the driver anyway

Had thought so too, yet other much older posts point to astrotracer being on as a way to step forward. I wasn't able to open and close the shutter when astrotracer was turned off. I presume, when things settle into a working order, I can turn tracking off on the mount when capturing. I'm more curious about the loop the log shows (saved buffer incrementing until 870..?

It's been quite a while since I looked at the K3 as I ended up using my K1ii for longer exposures. Could it be that the camera is still exposing when attempting to download? I just looked at my K3 and it's left in PTP mode rather than MSC, and I have a suspicion that this is how I got it to work. I also downloaded files as native/RAW rather than fits, as it was way quicker.

Quick check on my profile in Kstars and it looks like I had the driver in legacy mode as well

I wonder if that may be it. I will lower the raw file size and see if that makes a difference. As for Legacy, I have a testing protocol used for the K20D and K30 that cycles thru Native, Legacy and Gphoto and tries out functions. I recall that with Legacy, I got two Pentax K3ii tabs and no shutter action. Curiously, for both Legacy and Gphoto, the shutter release port field was blank with its corresponding lamp (green, yellow, red, etc) was unlit. I wonder if there is a /dev/tty? expert out there?

PTP mode had no real functionality in my tests, fyi

another issue is that the current BLOB used by INDI pentax driver does not support arm64, so it effectively can no longer be used with modern Raspberry PIs.

Now that's interesting and useful to know as I'm considering the Stellarmate pro to speed things up. Just wanted to be certain that I can use it with my pentax cameras/lenses.

So I played some more and set the remote control option in the camera menus to active. I also set the jpeg file size (but assume this will have no effect on the raw image). The camera took a 1 sec exposure as instructed by kstars and then stalled. Checking the log the capture completed bu the software was waiting for the download (see below).

Ok latest news. Using M mode with the Native drivers, 1 or 2 second exposures, I can take single shot images in FITS format (with the ISO I choose) or Native (saved as .raw with no viewer). Sequences can also be taken and the FITS files drop in the required directory.

Anything longer just hangs again. I did add a 2 sec delay and I thought I could do a 10 sec exposure, however, I could only get this result once and unable to repeat.

So, it seems that the process flows appear to work, and I guess some code tweaks may yield more exposure possibilities, unless anyone has other parameter tweaks to suggest?