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INDI Library v2.0.6 is Released (02 Feb 2024)

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QHY294C not recognised and indi driver crash in KStars 3.4.0 and 3.4.1

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Hi,

In the recent public releases of KStars 3.4.0 and 3.4.1 for MacOSX, the QHY294C is no longer recognised and the indi driver for it will crash upon starting the ekos server. There had been no issues with KStars 3.3.9 apart from occasional capture timeouts.

I checked the logs and found the following :
[2020-03-12T08:16:13.018 +08 INFO ][ org.kde.kstars.ekos] - "Unable to establish:\n+ QHY CCD\nPlease ensure the device is connected and powered on."
[2020-03-12T08:16:13.342 +08 DEBG ][ org.kde.kstars.indi] - Adding managed driver "QHY CCD"
[2020-03-12T08:16:13.343 +08 DEBG ][ org.kde.kstars.indi] - Starting INDI Driver "indi_qhy_ccd"
[2020-03-12T08:16:13.344 +08 DEBG ][ org.kde.kstars.indi] - INDI Server: "FIFO: start indi_qhy_ccd"
[2020-03-12T08:16:13.344 +08 DEBG ][ org.kde.kstars.indi] - INDI Server: "FIFO: Starting driver indi_qhy_ccd"
[2020-03-12T08:16:13.344 +08 DEBG ][ org.kde.kstars.indi] - INDI Server: ""
[2020-03-12T08:16:13.344 +08 DEBG ][ org.kde.kstars.indi] - INDI Server: "2020-03-12T00:16:13: Driver indi_qhy_ccd: pid=26582 rfd=11 wfd=18 efd=22"
[2020-03-12T08:16:13.345 +08 DEBG ][ org.kde.kstars.indi] - INDI Server: ""
[2020-03-12T08:16:13.350 +08 DEBG ][ org.kde.kstars.indi] - INDI Server: "2020-03-12T00:16:13: Driver indi_qhy_ccd: dyld: Library not loaded: @rpath/libqhyccd.6.dylib"
[2020-03-12T08:16:13.350 +08 DEBG ][ org.kde.kstars.indi] - INDI Server: "2020-03-12T00:16:13: Driver indi_qhy_ccd: Referenced from: /Applications/KStars.app/Contents/MacOS/indi/indi_qhy_ccd"
[2020-03-12T08:16:13.351 +08 DEBG ][ org.kde.kstars.indi] - INDI Server: "2020-03-12T00:16:13: Driver indi_qhy_ccd: Reason: image not found"
[2020-03-12T08:16:13.352 +08 DEBG ][ org.kde.kstars.indi] - INDI Server: ""
[2020-03-12T08:16:13.352 +08 DEBG ][ org.kde.kstars.indi] - INDI Server: "Child process 26582 died"
[2020-03-12T08:16:13.352 +08 DEBG ][ org.kde.kstars.indi] - INDI Server: "2020-03-12T00:16:13: Driver indi_qhy_ccd: stderr EOF"
[2020-03-12T08:16:13.352 +08 DEBG ][ org.kde.kstars.indi] - INDI Server: "2020-03-12T00:16:13: Driver indi_qhy_ccd: Terminated after #0 restarts."
[2020-03-12T08:16:13.352 +08 DEBG ][ org.kde.kstars.indi] - INDI Server: ""
[2020-03-12T08:16:13.353 +08 CRIT ][ org.kde.kstars.indi] - INDI driver "indi_qhy_ccd" crashed!

I am running on macOS Catalina 10.15.3
4 years 2 weeks ago #50657

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The driver on MacOS is getting linked to the wrong SDK version ... I will ask Robert to see what could be causing this. Hopefully by 3.4.2 it would be fixed.
4 years 2 weeks ago #50661

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For what it's worth, it's not working on the Linux version of KStars 3.4.1 either, but it isn't failing in quite the same way as described here, either:

Warning: Spoiler!


As I mentioned some time ago in the other QHY294C thread, it works on my Astroberry which has KStars 3.3.8:
indilib.org/forum/general/4721-any-news-...c-support.html#49454

Is there anywhere that the earlier 3.3.8 or 3.3.9 versions of KStars can be installed from? Or is it actually the related indi-qhy package that needs to be installed? Version 2.5 of indi-qhy is installed on the Astroberry compared to v. 2.6~202002241234~ubuntu19.10.1 on my desktop machine.
3 years 11 months ago #51359

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It's not related to KStars (it's just a front-end), so yes it's INDI QHY driver, and more specifically the QHY SDK because the indi-qhy driver has not changed in a while, the SDK is what is updated. I just pushed the QHYSDK v20.3.21, can you test with this on the next nightly on Linux and report back? or you can compile now if you're up to it. If the SDK fails to detect the camera, then we can report this to QHY to investigate.
3 years 11 months ago #51472

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I updated indi-qhy (and only indi-qhy) to the latest nightly (20200401...) and INDI is still not picking up the camera.

I got a message after the update to restart the computer, so I also tested it before and after restarting with no go either time.

One other thing is that the device isn't even recognized anymore by the OS when plugged into a USB 3.0 port; lsusb finds it when plugged into a 2.0 port but not a 3.0 port.

Once I removed the nightly indi-qhy and replaced it with the stable indi-qhy (20200223...), lsusb once again recognized it when plugged into the 3.0 port - it gets identified as a "Cypress WestBridge".
3 years 11 months ago #51497

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It might be worthwhile to contact QHY about this issue now since the SDK fails to identify the camera.
3 years 11 months ago #51503

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Where are you actually getting the SDKs? The QHY website is something of a disaster. After following all manner of links I even somehow stumbled upon a bbs they host.

From the latter, I found the following thread and message with some QHY .debs:
www.qhyccd.com/bbs/index.php?topic=7477.msg37456#msg37456
www.openastroproject.org/wp-content/uplo...cd_6.0.5-1_amd64.deb
www.openastroproject.org/wp-content/uplo...ev_6.0.5-1_amd64.deb
www.openastroproject.org/wp-content/uplo...ware_6.0.5-1_all.deb

So those .debs are from December. I installed the firmware and libqhyccd .debs, but I had to invoke --force-overwrite to install qhy-firmware over the files indi-qhy had installed. Having done so the camera is now detected properly by the OS in a USB 3.0 port (after unplugging and plugging back in):
Bus 002 Device 002: ID 1618:c295 QHYCCD QHY294C
whereas with the stable (not nightly) indi-qhy it was:
Bus 001 Device 015: ID 1618:c294 Cypress WestBridge

Opening up KStars and Ekos, the camera is also now detected properly. This message was in the Indi panel:
[INFO] Using QHY SDK version 20.2.3

... which is ... weird, because I just finished installing something from December 2019 not February 2020, but it does correspond to the indi-qhy on the system, so maybe that's what that is.

I appear to have cooler control and I can take pictures with it so it appears to be working. It's been below -10°C outside every time I've imaged with it since I bought it, so I've never actually bothered looking into the cooler functions yet, but there was someone in the other thread having issues with that. I'll look into that tomorrow.

I don't mind experimenting quite a bit and even taking this up with QHY, but I would have to know where the most recent SDK is from as well because at least then I can test it directly.
Last edit: 3 years 11 months ago by David James.
3 years 11 months ago #51535

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I just bought an older but still relatively recent tablet computer (a Lenovo X230T) to use as part of my astrophotography setup. I installed Kubuntu 20.04 LTS on it, and after that, KStars from the PPA (i.e. kstars-bleeding, never once touched the Ubuntu repository version).

So we have:

kstars-bleeding 6:3.4.2+202004251749~ubuntu20.04.1
indi-qhy 2.6~202004201858~ubuntu20.04.1
libqhy 3.31+stable~202004192223~ubuntu20.04.1

And... it doesn't work.

However, if I go off to QHYCCD and, after navigating about blindly for awhile, get V2020.02.19.0 from
www.qhyccd.com/index.php?m=content&c=ind...how&catid=127&id=163
i.e.
www.qhyccd.com/file/repository/latestSof...yccd_V20200219_0.tgz

and install it ... it all works.

The message in the Indi panel is now:
[INFO] Using QHY SDK version 20.2.19

So there's definitely something lacking in the INDI QHY drivers as I'm getting the exact same thing issues in two separate computers.
3 years 10 months ago #53255

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There's still something wrong with qhylib and/or indi-qhy and the QHY294C.

Another new computer, another new installation and another round of INDI not being able to detect the 294C.

And yet again downloading the SDK direct from QHY and installing that allows for it to be detected by INDI.


To be clear, that makes 3 computers where the exact same thing happens - using only packages from the PPA results in non-detection; installing the SDK from QHY though enables detection and use.
Last edit: 3 years 3 months ago by David James.
3 years 3 months ago #64297

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There was an issue reported against the Fedora build of the qhylib recently. It has to do with the cameras needing firmware loaded to be identified and energized. There is a program called fxload to do this. The Fedora problem is the version of fxload that is bundled with Fedora is, well, ancient, and only supports USB2, but the later QHY cameras are USB3 and as such are not identified. I mention this because it sounds like it could be related. It might also explain why it works with the factory SDK. I would imagine Ubuntu also uses fxload, if so what version is on your newly installed system?

Jim
3 years 3 months ago #64350

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~$ apt-cache policy fxload
fxload:
  Installed: 0.0.20081013-1ubuntu2
  Candidate: 0.0.20081013-1ubuntu2
  Version table:
 *** 0.0.20081013-1ubuntu2 500
        500 http://ca.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu groovy/universe amd64 Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

This version seems to be everywhere and is in pretty widespread use by all major Linux distros and then some.

A USB3-related issue would explain what I'm seeing, as it does work on my RPi 3B+ (Astroberry), which is USB2. My tablet and newest computer - a Lenovo M93P 'Tiny' - are all-USB3, while it was detected in a USB2 port on my desktop but not in the USB3 ports.
3 years 3 months ago #64357

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bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1907078

I opened a ticket against upstream for this. It really needs to be updated. Somebody may want to open similar against Ubuntu. The version of fxload provided on both distributions is over 12 years old. In the meantime, it seems loading the QHY sdk is the way to go, as that provides a newer fxload.

Jim
3 years 3 months ago #64495

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