Correcto

Thanks for your post. I have an A7R4 and your post helped getting most of the way through getting images off the camera. I am running Kstars on a MacBook with the Sony and CEM40G running on Astroberry on an RPI4 with 8MB. Your advice got me to the point where I can reliably collect and get a FITS image displayed however, it doesn’t save either locally or remotely. It does end up on the SD card so it is still useful. I checked permissions locally and remotely and I can save a FITS file from the viewer. BTW I was running the camera in APSC mode just in case the image was too large.

Are there any diagnostics I can collect and look at?

Thanks

Kurt

Cool. I have no idea about running it with the RPI. Perhaps my below notes can help you to turn on the diagnostic reporting on the different (2?) levels of Kstars and indilib perhaps there are more?
Do you get things working well without the RPI? Simplify first if not and then build up?

Cheers,
Jurgen

=== Settings
* DB ~/Library/Application Support/kstars/userdb.sqlite
* Ekos ~/.indi
* KStars preferences file ~/Library/Preferences/kstarsrc
=== Logs
* Indi using utc time stamps ~/.indi/logs/2021-01-08/indi_sony_ccd/indi_sony_ccd_19/53/15.log
* KStars using local ts ~/Library/Application\ Support/kstars/logs
=== Drivers
* Indi /Applications/KStars.app/Contents/MacOS/indi
=== Data
* KStars Data Directory ~/Library/Application Support/kstars

Jurgen

Seems every way I turn is a roadblock. If it try and run on my Mac everything is fine but the iGuide camera driver isn’t available on the Mac. INDI is available on a PC. However the Sony camera behaves the same if I drive it from the RPI or from a direct USB connection to the Mac. It is 20x faster on the Mac. How do you drive it? I thought of building a Linux machine but probably no difference.

So I edit these files and find a debug switch? What do I do with the DB file?

Thanks
Kurt

Ok Maybe I am going mad. I tried again on my MacBook Pro and the same thing. Then I went to the RPI and everything works. The files appear on the RPI and the transfer is a very fast 6 seconds for a 61 mega-pixel image. The only difference, maybe, is I plugged the CEM40G into the USB3 port on the RPI and the camera is, as always, plugged into the USB connector on the declination mount. I can control the CEM40G and read the guide camera which is configured as a V4L2. Also I switched to TeamViewer which is really nice and pretty fast. I only wish I could hide the TeamView control widget.

Thanks for all the help

Kurt

Hi Kurt,

I can imagine it feels like that and I'm in no way the expert in these matters. I have not done guiding like you are trying. I did see KStars perform a bit faster on the Mac in the case of the histogram calculations of the image viewer. It certainly is a nice port/build on macOS.
No need to edit the files. No need to do anything with the db file.
Do turn on debugging for the camera as you can do shown in the attached.

Let me know if you like me to record a little screencast demo of working with the Sony A7S.

Cheers,
Jurgen

Still no luck getting pictures downloaded to local host. I switched to running Kstars on the Mac connected directly to the mount and camera via USB. The A7R4 reliably downloads fits images but no raw or JPEG files are saved using either the photo or Sony DLSR driver. Funny thing is that using gphoto2 on Mac command line will download both RAW, JPG, or both but only when a --wait-event=10s option is used I am wondering if a wait option is needed in Indi

Please check the GPhoto driver source code and see if there is anywhere for this. In the current code, it wait for an event starting from line 1367

Jasem

Wow there is a lot of code there. I spent some time looking at it and my first guess is that this uses the libgphoto2 and makes direct calls to the library. I have been using the command line gphoto2 with the following command:

gphoto2 --wait-event=10s --capture-image-and-download --force-overwrite --filename xxx.jpg

So I don't actually know what the wait-event waits for but after the command is issued nothing happens for several seconds and then the shutter clicks. The code you direct me to seems to be in the area where INDI waits for the image to download. On photo if you don't wait long enough nothing happens in the camera. You don't actually capture a photo. So it isn't like a failure to wait for the download to finish.

There is some discussion here: github.com/gphoto/gphoto2/issues/272

I also discovered that gphoto2 supposedly can control the focus so maybe I could write some code to add that to INDI so sunny camera users could use the EKOS focus feature. That might be a bridge quite far but maybe not too far.


I get the following output

'Loading camera drivers from '/usr/l... | \ 0.0%
Loading camera drivers from '/usr/l... |- | 5.0%
Loading camera drivers from '/usr/l... |-- / 10.0%
Loading camera drivers from '/usr/l... |--- - 15.0%
Loading camera drivers from '/usr/l... |---- \ 20.0%
Loading camera drivers from '/usr/l... |

---

| 25.0%
Loading camera drivers from '/usr/l... |

---

/ 30.0%
Loading camera drivers from '/usr/l... |

---

- 35.0%
Loading camera drivers from '/usr/l... |

---

\ 40.0%
Loading camera drivers from '/usr/l... |

---

| 45.0%
Loading camera drivers from '/usr/l... |

---

/ 50.0%
Loading camera drivers from '/usr/l... |

---

- 55.0%
Loading camera drivers from '/usr/l... |

---

\ 60.0%
Loading camera drivers from '/usr/l... |

---

| 65.0%
Loading camera drivers from '/usr/l... |

---

/ 70.0%
Loading camera drivers from '/usr/l... |

---

- 75.0%
Loading camera drivers from '/usr/l... |

---

\ 80.0%
Loading camera drivers from '/usr/l... |

---

| 85.0%
Loading camera drivers from '/usr/l... |

---

/ 90.0%
Loading camera drivers from '/usr/l... |

---

- 95.0%

Waiting for 10 seconds for events from camera. Press Ctrl-C to abort.
UNKNOWN PTP Property 0000 changed
UNKNOWN PTP Property 0000 changed
UNKNOWN PTP Property 0000 changed
UNKNOWN PTP Property 0000 changed
UNKNOWN PTP Property 0000 changed
UNKNOWN PTP Property 0000 changed
Downloading... |- \ 2.1%
Downloading... |-- | 5.3%
Downloading... |--- / 7.4%
Downloading... |

---

- 10.5%
Downloading... |

---

\ 13.7%
Downloading... |

---

| 15.8%
Downloading... |

---

/ 18.9%
Downloading... |

---

- 21.1%
Downloading... |

---

\ 24.2%
Downloading... |

---

| 27.4%
Downloading... |

---

/ 29.5%
Downloading... |

---

- 32.6%
Downloading... |

---

\ 35.8%
Downloading... |

---

| 37.9%
Downloading... |

---

/ 41.1%
Downloading... |

---

- 43.2%
Downloading... |

---

\ 46.3%
Downloading... |

---

| 49.5%
Downloading... |

---

/ 51.6%
Downloading... |

---

- 54.7%
Downloading... |

---

\ 57.9%
Downloading... |

---

| 60.0%
Downloading... |

---

/ 63.2%
Downloading... |

---

- 65.3%
Downloading... |

---

\ 68.4%
Downloading... |

---

| 71.6%
Downloading... |

---

/ 73.7%
Downloading... |

---

- 76.8%
Downloading... |

---

\ 80.0%
Downloading... |

---

| 82.1%
Downloading... |

---

/ 85.3%
Downloading... |

---

- 87.4%
Downloading... |

---

\ 90.5%
Downloading... |

---

| 93.7%
Downloading... |

---

/ 95.8%
Downloading... |

---

| 98.9%
Downloading... |

---

| 100.0%

New file is in location /capt0000.jpg on the camera
Saving file as 28-Mar-2021 20.52.51 Focus -47.JPG
Deleting file /capt0000.jpg on the camera

Thank you for the feedback. Btw, have you tried changing RAM/SDCARD settings to see if they make any difference in the driver settings?

Do You really solved this problem.
I'm trying to use this driver in non bulb mode (essential with A7S Star Eater) and I never achieve this operation.
1) No data is saved on A7S memory card (that non a big issue)
2) The photo saved on PI card is always wrong

Just have a look on my first post here indilib.org/forum/ccds-dslrs/8282-a7s-non-bulb-mode.html
To add some new information, when connecting to the A7S, I supposed that a first photo is engaged and when you try to take a photo, in fact Kstars/Ekos deals with the previous one. In this situation you cannot use astrometry and focusing, since all the intelligence is applied to a wrong image!

Thanks
Joe
 

I thought I would add this: My A7R4 only randomly saves the image and I couldn't figure out when or why it does or why it doesn't. I have run on the RPI/Astroberry and the Mac with the same results.Yesterday I discovered that using the Sony DSLR driver and just executing from a sequence that the images get stored normally in the local folder. I had never used the collection sequence before and was just using the single and repeated collections buttons in the lower right of the Camera window.

Kurt