Hi Folks,
Ekos will not save requested number of images to USB thumb drive:

On the Camera tab, I ask for 1000 exp's at 1 sec.  It has never achieved this.  It will either stop at some random, shorter number of exposures, or falsely reports the sequence complete and 1000 exp's taken when an actual of 577 was taken.  Every time I run a test it is a different number.  I watched one test sequence and the camera tab was dutifully reporting exposures were being taken and "downloaded" when in fact they were not.

The project is an All Sky Viewer:  ASI120MM mini with a fish eye connected to the astroberry pi, powered by a Talentcell 12VDC via 5VDC converter.

Steps taken:
1.  Installed latest updates
1.  USB thumb drive was formatted in NTFS at first.  Tried ext4 with no change.
3.  Switched from battery to AC-DC wall adapter.  No change.
4.  Switched from a PNY 512GB to a Samsung 256GB drive (NTFS and ext4 as well).  No change.

Appreciate any and all help.
Thanks

From the Ekos menu, let us know where you've saving the images. Remote? Client?
Can we have more info about your setup please?

Hi, I am saving locally, i.e. on the pi.
My setup as an ASI120MM mini,
astronomy-imaging-camera.com/product/asi120mm-mini-mono
astroberry installed on a rasberry 4 pi 8GB.
www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08956GVXN/ref..._title?ie=UTF8&psc=1
or
www.amazon.com/gp/product/B089ZZXCHJ/ref..._title?ie=UTF8&psc=1
Samsung 256GB usb drive
www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07D7Q41PM/ref..._title?ie=UTF8&psc=1
Samsung 64GB SD card
www.amazon.com/gp/product/B073JYVKNX/ref..._title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Camera is mounted on a camera tripod pointed straight up with a ZWO 22mm fish eye lens. 
Powered by Talentcell via 12VDC to 5VDC converter or AC/DC adapter. 
Since the camera is my only device, running the ZWO CCD driver only on the indi server and therefore only the camera is setup on the indi control panel.
I remote in via VNC viewer from Samsung tablet through its hots spot.
That's it.  Simple.  Using as a test case before applying to my full imaging rig.
I am just taking series of images (30 second exposures normally for the entire night) and compiling them into a video using PIPP.

Have a bad feeling I am not answering your question.  Can you please be more specific?  Thank you...Will be happy to take screen shots or whatever you need.

P.S.  While waiting a response Tried on my backup astroberry pi made by another manufacturer and it did the same thing.  Used its own Samsung 256GB NTFS thumb drive.  This did not have the latest updates.  This time, stopped just 13 exp's short of target, but still reported "Complete" and text window at bottom, last entry, stated "Received image 1000 out of 1000". I tried saving the images internally with same result. Stopped a couple of hundred short of target.
 

To test your USB thumb drive, try the following in a folder (mkdir /home/test ; cd /home/test/)
for i in {1..1000}; do dd if=/dev/urandom bs=1M count=1 of=file$i; done
replace bs=1M with bs=SIZE-of-30s-exposure-file

Not specifically the answer you're looking for but from what I read you are setting up an All-Sky camera, using Ekos and Indilib. You may be interested in a self contained All-Sky camera that does not use Ekos and Indi, such as the one presented by Thomas Jacquin on github.com/thomasjacquin/allsky .

His All-Sky can make use of diverse cameras such as: Raspberry Pi HQ camera, ASI120MC*, ASI120MM*, ASI120MC-S, ASI120MM-S, ASI224MC, ASI178MC, ASI185MC, ASI290MC, ASI1600MC, and are controlled by a Raspberry Pi. It may or may not satisfy your specific requirements but it may be worthwhile to take a look as it allows setting many operation parameters.

Hope this helps.

Ran the shell script and it populated the USB drive with 1M files, all 1000 of them.  No issues
Tektonik.
Curious to hear from some readers what storage they use, brand and model.
 

Gille,  Looked at that link you sent.  It is a very well done project.  Congrats to the authors.
But, not for me at the present time.  As I stated earlier, this project is a baby step before moving KStars/Ekos to the full imaging setup.  If I can't do the most basic task of getting X number of exposures, I need not go further.
Thanks for your time!  Might have to revisit that later.
Tektonik

Any permission issues in the USB thumb drive? can you create files in there manually?

Hi Jasem, No issues there. Created directories, read, write, deletes, and executes shell scripts on as well.

Will be trying a couple of things: 

1.  Different camera, but all I have is another ZWO which will use the same driver but you never know
2.  Download the images to remote location, not the pi.

Don't think it is an USB issues since it read/writes just fine, and even saving to the SD card has the same issue.  In both cases there is GB's of space remaining.

Also tried an "ancient" Sandisk thumbdrive (10yrs old).  No luck

Cheers
 

Interesting, when I ran Ekos from the laptop, connected wirelessly to the pi, and captured images to the laptop, it worked fine. All 1000, nothing missing.

Weird science...

Will try ASI 294 next

Ok, while running a test with a different cable, the Ekos camera tab was reporting exposures being taken and stored, when in fact they were not.  The fits viewer also froze at the actual last picture stored (about 248 out of 1000 target).  The image folder on the thumb drive also reflected the 248 number.