@phattire72 You might also try testing the camera operation using gphoto bash commands as the indlib library is based on that. I think bulb mode has to be set to a particular type in menus but I can't remember which one works...since mine still does not.

K-5/K-5II are well supported by GPhoto2. They are also awesome astrophotography cameras.

I have been using my K-5II with Kstars via StellarMate for about 1.5 years now.

However, the drivers do not work on a Mac - I don't know about PC but probably yes.

I also have a K-3II but it doesn't work. Its something to do with the bulb mode operation, which seems to be different than the K-5. I've tried the K-3 with click-open/click-shut and click-hold-open bulb modes but neither works with GPHoto2. I guess the K70 and k-50 probably have the same issue as the K-3. I've raised an issue with the developer but he seems to have left his post :-s I don't know if anyone is working on it now.

Minus 1 for the K3 then.
Thanks @Pentaxian23, thats's good to know. I've been watching Ebay for a k5 but stopped, unsure of driver status. Gphoto dev @msmeissn is a busy guy(so many cameras!), but if you offer to run testing for him and do the logs he may work on it a bit to see if it's got that firmware problem nobody has gotten around yet. He may also already know it does and so hasn't spent time on it for that reason, though he's usually pretty quick to respond in either case. Life may have indeed slowed work as it does to all of us. You might try poking him with a sharp stick(bump the post) to get an answer, though he's probably on holiday right now on way up on some alp safely away from emails.

Thanks @blueshawk. I’ll give that a try. Easy enough to test the driver. Just a little weak on building the code.

I won a k5 at auction the other day and started wrangling it...I remember now what a pita all this was when I was testing for it. I'm thinking about starting a new thread in hopes of getting a tutorial on getting an up to date libgphoto, gphoto2 and camera setup etc. Any help here would also be appreciated and well..helpful.
I can build libgphoto but it doesn't appear to build latest gphoto2. Seems like I recall something weird I had to do but its fuzzy. I'll reread issue 31 and see what I did when I had a few more brain cells connecting. Why do ubuntu based repos all have to have 5 year old junk?

questions for the k5:
what mode ptp or msc?
which bulb mode?
what version of gphoto2 works and what command got results?
Are we using indi_gphoto_ccd or indi_pentax_ccd in indiserver?
Is there already a tutorial I'm not finding?
Will it ever stop raining in Virginia?
Cheers! Happy new Year everybody

MSC
K5 has only one Bulb mode that I know of - not the same as K3
indi_gphoto_ccd and indi_pentax_ccd both work but I was told to use indi_pentax_ccd so that's what I do and its working nicely
only issue I have is that bulb of <1sec is about 1/32 sec and >1sec is about 3+ secs so its hard to get short exposures for flats.
Also, I use native (DNG raw) rather than fits capture otherwise you won't get the colour matrix for post processing - although it seems most processors ignore that anyway.

@pentaxian23: Thanks. That's a good start and pretty much what I had. looks like I'm still struggling with out of date libgphoto stuff on this new notebook.
Some thoughts on that timing issue you're having: In the gphoto driver, "force bulb mode drops back to regular exposure for <1sec. That may be a clue. I'll know more once I get things working.

Oh! Good to know! That'll help a lot for doing better flats. Thanks!

Continuing to have difficulty getting the k5 connected to either Gphoto2 or indi drivers. I now have the latest Gphoto2 and LibGphoto compiled. When I try to connect I get no camera found, unless I set the camera to PTP mode, which won't do any controls or capture. I feel like I'm missing something. It shows up on lsusb as "pentax" and is not mounted as a drive. I've got clear sky for the first time this year. HALP!

Update: I messed it up when I tried it on ptp the settings file in .gphoto got updated with
gphoto2=port=usb:001,006
I realize now this was a mistake. It should have usbscsi: /dev/sg0
Now it just says -7 I/0 error yay!

• Solved the I/o error. It was related to firmware. We'll need to note that in the tutorial. I had 1.11 and updated to 1.16 which solved the i/o error. Folks can find it at RICOH Japan


• A udev rule to properly assign the port when "pentax" is found might be nice too and might stop the port creep I found after I figured out that first error.

I got some weird results when I set it up in user mode then my one working battery went dead again.(now charging) I've got a supply and batteries on the way which should be here by midweek.
[UPDATE:] New batteries came in and I did get capture to work in user mode, as well as a test 50second bulb shot in the focus module. --so of course snow by the weekend.

I'd like to see other users camera settings and XML setups too, as well as any tips you might find working with this. I had a hard time getting this going so I'm hoping to do some sort of writeup we can put in documents for using Pentax with indi.
One tip I saw recently involved using the camera in mirrorlockup mode with multishot. I read that as long as your exposures are longer than storage time it will hold it up and keep shooting with an intervalometer, but I haven't tested it, and I'm not sure the driver will handle it correctly as is. Sounds like a neat trick that we might make use of somehow, MLU button perhaps?

***new question*** ---> Has anybody managed to get 80iso to show on the drop downs? This is a special gain setting i've heard great things about from other AP Pentaxians but I noticed it didn't show up in the indidriver.

I did manage to find a workaround for my K-70 and the bulb issue. It isn't ideal, but it should let me start to use the dither feature with auto-guiding. I'm not sure if this will work with any of the other Pentax cameras, but if someone can test it would be good to confirm.

The trick to the workaround is to use one of the User settings on the dial and program it to use the bulb setting. The U3 setting is setup for astrophotography by default and is the setting I used, but you will need to turn the noise reduction off as it is set on auto by default. In the user setting you can set your exposures from 10 seconds to 20 minutes. You will then need to set the INDI photo capture setting to match. You will also need to make sure you manually set the camera to the correct ISO as well because INDI does not seem to be able to change it in this mode.

I tested this using the simulated autoguiding, and it did wait to take the next frame while the simulation was dithering. Hopefully I'll have a clear night soon so a real test can be done, but I am hopefull that this will work and I can start to use dithering with my guiding finally.

I hope a software solution to the Pentax K-70 bulb issues gets found, but this will work for me in the meantime.