@thx8411
Last night I finally had clear enough weather, calm enough wind, a reworked cable management solution, and most importantly, time! The on-camera support worked flawlessly, as far as I could tell. However, I had some issue with my wifi around 2:15 am, after I went to sleep, so I didn't wind up guiding for long as I lost connectivity to my rpi4. Seems like my access points decided to play musical channels, according to Unifi.

For clarity, I have the sv305 pro connected to a usb 3 port on the pi and the st4 port on my mount, while my canon 1300d is connected to a usb2 port on the pi which I then connect to using VirtualHere, so losing wifi means I'm no longer imaging. To @JonCarleton's point, I may have to suck it up and learn how to use Ekos as opposed to APT for imaging so that connectivity issues won't ruin future imaging sessions. But I just love how APT is set up.

I also captured what I'm talking about when it comes to 12 versus 8 bit issues with the sv305. Specifically, what I interpret as unstable brightness/gamma in phd2. The guide and debug logs from phd2 are attached.

@jaytay
That sounds like a USB issue to me, but since the pi4 has the usb3 ports connected via pcie , bandwidth shouldn't be an issue. Do you have the sv305 pro connected to one of the usb 3 ports on the rpi4? What other, if any, devices do you have connected to the pi? Are you using a hub? What kind of power source do you have for the pi? Have you tried another cable?

Hello Ginger,

Thanks for your tests.
The fix as been merged to the main repository.

I never had your capture issue with the SV305, but I had exactly the same problem with a QHY5. It looks like a USB power issue.
My USB power wasn't stable enough, the sensor's analogic/digital converter reference voltage swinged. I Fixed the issue by soldering a filter capacitor.

Best regards,

Blaise

Did you just put the cap across +5v and ground? I wonder if the 5v fan I have hooked up on the pi might be introducing some noise. I'd be surprised though, since it's a noctua.

Thanks Blaise.
When do you expect the latest build will be incorporated into Astroberry/AstroDMx? I rather not attempt another build because my last one failed.

Hi Ginger,

Right, but it's a bit ugly. I don't recommend it.
My QHY5 worked find during 5 years. It died on october.

I don't know. It depends on Jasem's release life cycles. But it will soon be available in the indi nightly repo : launchpad.net/~mutlaqja/+archive/ubuntu/indinightly/

What kind of error ?

Best regards

Sorry for the delay Blaise.

You can read my timeline starting around post #58438.

I "gave up" at post #59347 because a working driver was released with AstroDMx on Aug 31st.

The process was a little frustrating to this newbie so I took the easy route.

You and all the other contributors were very helpful along the way. I just gave up because I was so anxious to try the SV305 with my RPi 4B.

My programming skills and patience have definitely taken a left turn over the last 30 years.

Cheers

Doug

@JonCarleton I actually have 2 drivers listed for the sv305. One is the SV305 CCD, this one does not connect to the camera and SVBONY SV305, this one connects to the camera. It's strange though as when you hover over the selection its give the same .exe (indi_sv305_ccd) but list different drivers. The sv305 ccd shows driver SV305 CCD and the svbony sv305 shows driver SVBONY SV305. Not to sure if this is a drive conflict from the same .exe. I tried binning at 4x but it still hangs.

@gingerbreadassasin The camera is connected directly to the rpi4 usb3. I tried both ports and the usb 2 ports. Oddly enough I get more exposures with the usb2 ports before it hangs then with the usb3 ports. For testing purposes I removed all other usb devices (onstep mount, Nikon d5300, and thumbdrive) from the pi. The cable supplied with the camera is 6ft. I order 2 more 3 ft. ones to test with. I also tested the camera on my windows desktop with phd2 and ascom, work as it should but couldn't change binning for some reason. I think it may have something to do with the usb power and cable length. I'll test more when the new shorter cables show up to day.

@jaytay -- I run my cameras off a powered USB hub. In the past, I had issues with running them directly off the Pi USB ports. It caused low-power alerts on the Pi. Ever since I started using a powered hub, I stopped having camera issues with the Pi on all the cameras I use. The problem with power was not exclusive to Svbony cameras.

Interesting Jon. How were the power alerts displayed and which OS were you using? I'm running Astroberry.
You are using an RPi 4B I assume.

Doug

@jaytay: On Raspbian, there is a little lightening bolt in the upper right Desktop display. You should also see notes in some of the logs, such as /var/log/syslog or /var/log/messages. The Pi has had power issues for a long time even without heavy loads attached to the USB ports.

I have been having some issues with the stability of the SV305 with the device requiring power cycle. always on 12 - bit, never tried 8 - bit., and lately it was progressively getting worse with weird earthing issue and the rpi4 refusing to boot up when it is connected to the raspberry pi. turns out, the issue was the supplied usb cable. I had a spare cable and using that seemed to have sorted all problems for now.

Generally, the RPi4 has all 4 USB ports tied into a single PCIe lane limited to 4Gb/s (the SD card uses USB also). The whole Pi, has a max current limit of 1.2a, including board power, and whatever goes out the USB ports. This is why so many people have trouble running gear off the Pi's USB ports.

So, a good first step for problems with all USB gear attached directly to the Pi, is to move it off to a powered hub. Consider that any form of disk write, including images, temporary files, etc, are going to use a lot of USB bandwidth, and since USB 3.0 has a limit of 5Gb/s, and the Pi can do only 4, directly attached devices that use both current and bandwidth (like Cameras of any sort) are an iffy proposition at best, and often produce weird problems, problems caused by starving other devices, or just not working at all.

Another USB issue to keep in mind on the Pi4, is that the USB2.0 ports share a common root port - there is an integrated USB2.0 4-port hub in the VLI chip, so the total USB2.0 bandwidth across all 2.0 ports is 480mbit/s. USB3.0 hubs forward *both* USB3.0 and USB2.0 traffic, so the bandwidth limit applies even if you plug a USB2.0 device into a downstream USB3.0 hub. The PI's VLI chip can only handle 480Mbs total, and a USB2.0 camera can easily starve that, if it's using USB2.0, and even if its attached to a USB3 external powered hub. Something Astroberry and Stellarmate users should be aware of.

Power-wise, the RPi4 uses 575 mA at idle. Thus, there remain only 625mA for all other directly attached devices, but only when the PI is doing nothing at all. Typically, under normal loads, the Pi probably pulls more like 650-850 mA during normal use, leaving 400-500 mA for all directly attached devices. This creates a problem - The USB 2.0 specs call for the capability to use up to 500mA per connection, and 900mA for USB3.0. The Pi can't cover the potential load the spec places on it's (2) 3.0 and (2) 2.0 ports, which together would require 2800mA of power to attached devices to meet the basic USB spec.

Best practice - minimize the use of USB2.0 ports to the maximum extent possible, and move all devices requiring power to a powered USB3.1 hub.

Isn't the SV-305 a usb2.0 camera?