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

Bi-monthly release with minor bug fixes and improvements

Pentak K30 anyone have any luck getting it working?

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Hey Folks,
I know there has been a lot of posts around getting Pentax to work with EKOS and there has been huge work put into it and there has been a lot of success. I was wondering if anyone has manged to get their Pentax K30 to shoot in bulb mode? I am able to connect to my camera in msc mode and it detects it beautifully , How ever if i have my camera in bulb mode and force bulb mode option is enabled I cannot take a test shot, it dosent even fire regardless of the bulb setting I choose on the camera. Either press and hold or press once and press again to release. IF i disable force bulb mode and try to take an exposure of a couple of seconds the camera will fire off a shot but not for the required time only for 1/120 of a second or faster. I know some of the K family of cameras have some issues with bulb mode control, but it seems like we are very close to getting an actual working solution for these models.
So i was wondering if anyone out there had had any luck getting there K30 to work?

Thanks for reading.
Lenny
3 years 10 months ago #54484

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Try it with the new dedicated INDI Pentax driver.
3 years 10 months ago #54485

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Thanks Jasem! I will update and give it another go and report back.
3 years 10 months ago #54491

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File Attachment:

File Name: log_19-06-56.txt
File Size:310 KB


Hi Jasem,
I tried my Pentax again and I have attached the log file, this is probably a question for whoever wrote the driver. The camera would not trigger the shutter if i set the time greater than 30 seconds, if the time was less tha 30 seconds the shutter would fire and close instantly, this would only happen if i had force bulb disabled, if it was enabled nothing would happen. When i changed the bulb mode to 2 i.e once to open once to close the shutter would only fire when force bulb was disabled and time was less than 30 seconds. Also i had to manually press the shutter a second time in order to get it to stop and down load exposure. Maybe this could be a way foreward?

Hope this helps or can be used to get it working on this model. Feels like its so close :)

Thanks,
Lenny.
3 years 10 months ago #54616
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You're using INDI GPhoto driver still, there is a new driver INDI Pentax NATIVE should be available in nightly releaeses.
3 years 10 months ago #54683

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Im sorry Jasem I thought this was the native driver? This is what I was using. Are you saying there is another driver i need to download?
3 years 10 months ago #54688
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Lenny,

I'm responsible for the new Pentax driver. As far as I know, there hasn't been a ton of testing yet (beyond me and my K70), and I'd be really interested in finding out how it performs with other cameras. Sorry for the late response. I don't poke my head around here very often.

From the logs, it does not appear that you are using the new driver yet. The logs show you using indi_pentax_ccd, which is the Gphoto-based driver, whereas the new/native driver would show simply indi_pentax.

If you've downloaded and installed the nightlies, when you are selecting the driver in Ekos, you should see an option for "Pentax DSLR (Native)." I've attached a screenshot. Let me know if that helps. I'll subscribe to the thread so I can respond more quickly if you have any questions.

Karl

3 years 9 months ago #54951
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Thanks Karl, This would wear I went wrong I didn't download the nightlies! I am going to test this now as I am a huge fan of my Pentax but gave up using it for astronomy due to the lack of tethering.
3 years 9 months ago #54954

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Karl/Jasem,
I have updated the nightlys build but I dont see any Pentax Native available to use. Is there something I am missing or failing to do?

Thanks,
Lenny.
3 years 9 months ago #54958
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Putting back the text (more or less) since I was right after all:

It looks like the indi-3rdparty packages are not building and they haven't been building for a week at least now. For instance, I updated my nightly installation on Ubuntu 20.04 just now and the indi-asi package is
$> dpkg -l \*indi-asi\*
Desired=Unknown/Install/Remove/Purge/Hold
| Status=Not/Inst/Conf-files/Unpacked/halF-conf/Half-inst/trig-aWait/Trig-pend
|/ Err?=(none)/Reinst-required (Status,Err: uppercase=bad)
||/ Name           Version                        Architecture Description
+++-==============-==============================-============-======================================
ii  indi-asi       1.7~202005291515~ubuntu20.04.1 amd64        INDI Driver for ZWO Optics ASI cameras

while the libasi package is
$> dpkg -l \*libasi\*
Desired=Unknown/Install/Remove/Purge/Hold
| Status=Not/Inst/Conf-files/Unpacked/halF-conf/Half-inst/trig-aWait/Trig-pend
|/ Err?=(none)/Reinst-required (Status,Err: uppercase=bad)
||/ Name           Version                        Architecture Description
+++-==============-==============================-============-======================================================
ii  libasi         1.4~202004262330~ubuntu20.04.1 amd64        Library for ASI Cameras, Filter Wheel, Focuser and ST4

and I know for a fact that it should be newer since I pushed code for that last week which has been accepted into GitHub.
Last edit: 3 years 9 months ago by Wouter van Reeven.
3 years 9 months ago #54961

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I don't think this has anything to do with the indi-3rdparty packages not building.

Just from a quick test, I think this is an incompatibility problem between the driver or the package and Ubuntu Mate. Ubuntu Mate *thinks* the indi-pentax package is installed, but the indi_pentax executable never ends up in the /usr/bin folder.

I don't think Raspbian or Ubuntu x86 have the same problem. I'll have to double-check with a clean install to make sure.

I wonder if this has something to do with the armv6-armv7 compatibility problems with the Ricoh SDK I was having when compiling on Ubuntu Mate. But, my recollection is that I still at least was able to compile, so I'm not sure why Indi_pentax isn't getting installed. I'll dig into it some more over the next few days.
3 years 9 months ago #54968

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There was one missing file in the debian directory which I just added and pushed, so it should be fixed in the next nightly.
3 years 9 months ago #54970

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