Hello,

I am very new tp Astrophotography but wanted to start out using my trusty Nikon D200.

I have a setup a test rig and have the following setup.

Astroberry running and connected to my network.
Nikon D200 with 18-200mm AF-S DX lens
D200 connected to the rpi using USB tether cable and USB mode set to PTP on the camera.
lsusb reports the Nikon D200 connected in PTP mode.
Indi and kstars see the D200 and I can see the camera options using the indi control panel.
I have set the image size and pixel size from the online source database.
when I try and take a preview in the capture tab I get a failed to expose error. I can't seem to get past this.
Can anyone advise the basic settings I need to set on the D200 indi control panel or the camera to be able to at least preview and image and take test exposures.
Once I can confirm I can control the exposure I can move on the mount and other things.

The idea is to setup an astrophotography station in the paddock. We live on the edge of the Lincolnshire Wolds and have amazing dark skies as very low light pollution.
I have power and a wifi network for the security camera etc. to the paddock so the rig would be self contained with the rpi and astroberry server and all electronics remote.

I would then connect via the network to control the mount/camera etc. using my desktop. All images would be saved on the NAS server on the network and can them be processed using my powerful Ubuntu workstation.

But I cannot seem to get off the ground with even the basic connectivity to the camera and have read many many articles which are light on detail as to how this black magic works.

Any help would be much appreciated.

Cheers
Stephen

Does the shooting time on the camera have it in BULB mode?

Sorry for being late to the party. The Nikon driver is based off of the gphoto2 library. When you can get bulb exposures with gphoto2, then you can try either the indi_gphoto_ccd or indi_nikon_ccd. Before connecting make sure your camera is in bulb mode.

With gphot2 using entangle to control the camera. Then you are limited to 30 seconds exposure and this works reliably and consistently upto 30 sec exposures. However setting bulb mode on the camera and then connecting results in it not functioning. Gphot2 sets PC Mode on the camera LCD and is the same way that Nikon Capture software does. However, when connected via INDI the LCD camera screen is still operational. I don't know if this is how it is supposed ot work but all documentation says when connected via USB then it should show PC mode in the LCD.

Also, the Quality setting is not quite right. When you set the quality to RAW in the camera and connect it then it is displayed as unknown value 003 rather than RAW. Images captured seem to still be in RAW .NEF format. I think it is actually setting RAW with Lossless Compression. Rather than just RAW with no compression. Changing the setting in the software to RAW results in it setting RAW plus jpeg. This is a serious PITA as it fills up the SD card with useless jpg files. There is a size difference in the 2 .NEF files with the RAW software setting resulting in the larger file so probably RAW no compression but also a jpg. RAW setting on the camera then connect you get the 003 error but lossless compressed .nef and no jpg.

Any help appreciated.
Cheers

Let's tackle one issue after the other. I just tested the current indi_gphoto_ccd driver and the current Version of KStars on my 5DMk2 and it works without issues on 5s and 60s exposures in bulb mode. Make sure you have "FORCE BULB = ON" selected in Indi and set the camera to "bulb", too. Also, make sure "mirror lock" is set to 0 in Indi and mirror lock is deactivated in the camera. As Grimaldi said, if it works in gphoto2, it should work in KStars, too as it doesn't do anything different from what gphoto does.

Yes let's tackle one issue at a time. I am using a Nikon D200 you are using a Canon!

That's right but it proves it basically works so not an issue with Ekos/KStars in principle. Good luck.

It proves the Canon driver works. The Nikon driver does not. They are not the same code.

Ekos/Kstars is ok I think. The issue is the INDI driver.

I’m running into a similar problem as the OP described. Nikon D200 and latest drivers as of yesterday.

Has there been any resolution to this issue?

I’ll be trying to factory reset my camera, and verify the mirror lock up and try the various bulb/timing combos tonight.

Peter

Okay, after some new troubleshooting based on suggestions here:

Mirror lock is off, no change

Saving and then loading the configuration (force bulb set to off)allows the camera to work in non-bulb mode(camera can start in either bulb mode or with a shutter speed) which means photos of 30s or less. Preview button works. This is actually fine for my setup for now. The camera, as noted by the OP, does not switch to “pc mode” until a photo is taken or i load config but is shown as connected.

Setting force bulb to on and that’s it. I have to completely reset the camera and start stop the indi server to get it to work again even in non bulb mode. This was attempted with camera set to bulb and again with a shutter speed of 1”.

Setting quality to 003, as the OP notes, is uncompressed RAW. This is more of a cosmetic label issue than any real trouble.

Thanks for any thoughts.

Peter