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

Bi-monthly release with minor bug fixes and improvements

INDI Driver for SVBONY cameras

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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
3 years 4 months ago #62896
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@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.
3 years 4 months ago #62910
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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.
3 years 4 months ago #62911
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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?
Last edit: 3 years 4 months ago by Brian Davis. Reason: clarify
3 years 4 months ago #62912
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Very interesting details bdavis.
Considering the SV305 (for example) uses 500mA, there is not much left for other USB "stuff".
3 years 4 months ago #62920
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Just got done trying the shorter cables. No luck. Same issues. No matter if I set it to 8-bit, 2x, 3x, or 4x binning it hangs. I should have a powered usb hub tomorrow to test. I checked to log files and found nothing about low power warnings or any power warnings of any kind. Attached is a snip of the log file when the hang happens. It will keep timing out then reconnect after about 60 seconds of timeouts. I'll do a clean install of astroberry to see if there are any issues there. Maybe it'll fix my crashing issue when completing a polar alignment.
3 years 4 months ago #62927
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Have you tried the SV305 with AstroDMx instead of KStars/Ekos?
3 years 4 months ago #62929
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+1 for AstroDMx_Capture. It works very well with the SVBONY 305 and pro with its own drivers. It does a real-time looping at whatever capture speed you select that makes it easy to focus and gives a real what-you-see-is-what-you-get experience.

...but it won't solve a power issue.
3 years 4 months ago #62938
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Replied by a z on topic INDI Driver for SVBONY cameras

Hello, everyone on INDI forum!
I just have question about sv305 indi driver. Is there any hope that it will support not only basic operations but all features which camera has itself? Like SharpCap on Windows or AstroDMx on Linux? I mean ROI video recording and binning first of all.


From my experience SV305 consumes about 250 mA. May be up to 300-350 mA during video streaming.
3 years 4 months ago #62981
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Update: powered USB hub made no difference. Clean install did not help. I installed AstroDMx, it worked when I tested it inside. It started the guide calibration in ekos, it took probably 6 exposures but never made it past ra drift with the simulated telescope. Im not sure if it should have made it all the way and started "guiding" with the simulated telescope, but I pressed on. When I moved everything outside for a trial run it continued to hang in kstars/ekos. Astrodmx would loop and do single captures but no matter how I set the gain or exposure I never got a picture with starts. I'm wondering if it's an issue with the ARM chip/architecture in the RPI4. Is there anyone else guiding with ekos on an ARM platform? Or is everybody else running x86?
3 years 4 months ago #63012
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Replied by Mark on topic INDI Driver for SVBONY cameras

I'm running an Astroberry on an RPi4. I've yet to use it in anger, but every test has worked, now that the live view glitch I had, has been fixed. I was hoping to test it tonight, but I see clouds creeping over the horizon...

I use an industrial USB powered hub, which powers the RPi and SV305.
3 years 4 months ago #63016
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I am also using an RPi4. If you're running the astroberry image, it's armhf, not arm64, fwiw. Architecture shouldn't have much if anything to do with it. I connect to the camera from a Windows box via Indiserver.

I don't think I saw you mention, what is the power source for your RPi? Do you have any kind of cooling set up for it? After checking all of the above and these two, I would probably pick up another Pi to see if somehow you have a hardware issue.
3 years 4 months ago #63021
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