Update: solved the instability issue. It seemed to be a connection error between raspi and sd card which now and then resulted in a loss of the drive. (Maybe a bad or damaged pin). Cloning the sd has solved it.
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Hi all,
Finally got a good day for testing outside.
The new cam is a completely different league.
The native long exposures make the difference.
still having the instability issues (like raspi crashing when ending pc-direct mode on mount).
But was able to guide on 600mm imaging with 2 to 10 arc seconds RMS.
Br. Ept
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Hi All,
I have done some more testing and in windows via PHD2 (wdm webcam driver) the camera gives a lot more light (with 2sec exposures, they seemed native long exposures) than via the Ras Pi.
Did the test during dark indoor day conditions and with Ras Pi it was still pitch black while windows showed quite a nice Greyisch signal.
So assume it is a driver limitation on the Ras Pi and that the windows driver is able to to do longer exposures.
Unfortunatly i do not want my windows machines outside so i ordered a new camera =12.0pt(Altair GPCAM2 130 Mono) with hopefully better Ras Pi ekos drivers.
br
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p.s. with regard to the instability of the Ras Pi, could it be that i need to arrange a common ground or something?
I got the skywatcher eq3 mount (PC direct mode) connected to the Ras Pi via an usb cable to the remote control of the mount. so there are two power adapters i.e. a 12V for mount and a 5 volt for the Ras Pi.
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V4L2 solved the resolution and pixel size issue.
(be sure not to log as pi or admin).
I had some troubles posting this question and apparently made 2 almost identical post.
So i will continue in the other thread.
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Hi Jasem,Thank you for the tips and advice, they were very helpfull.I found out the following.The V4L2 driver always crashed when logged in as “pi”. Adding another common user solved the problem, although you need to arrange the permissions and also need to run “sudo chmod 777 /dev/video0” to be able to access the camera.I have a lot of stability troubles on this Ras pi (tried multiple installs on multiple sd cards), i found out that running via an Ethernet cable instead of wifi and powering on the eq3 mount (even when not using it) seems to have solved some. (I think a power usage problem from the mount via usb on the pi adapter).With V4L2 I can change the pixel size and get it as full HD in Ekos.The whole setup works now fine (in theory) and is able to guide on e.g. Vega and holds my 600 mm super steady (unfortunately there is nothing to photograph there 
). I have tried to add the canon 6D (main imaging camera) on Indi before but it did not work straight away and I figured to keep that on manual, as I want to save on camera SD anyways, so the only gain would be focus adjustment via Indi (using a Tamron 150-600 G2).However the main issue remains the lack of stars in the guide scope. I found that the V4L2 seems to only mount it as an 8 bit sensor (and actually I doubt the Bresser can handle more? I can’t seem to find it online.) Also the longest exposure time seems to be around 74 ms (due to the webcam nature, or is this a driver issue?). I think longer exposure times just stacks zeros resulting in a 0 for all pixels but the brightest ones, that with auto stretching, end up as 255. (p.s. autostretching does not help with determining optimal focus)All in all I am doubting I should buy another guide scope sensor that can handle longer native exposures, does anybody know if this would solve the problem? Which budget sensor would you advice? I need to have enough guide stars around the nice areas (m31, the popular nebulas and Pleiades) on a 240mm/60mm guide scope.Thanks in advance. EPT
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Hi All,
I am new to guiding and fairly new to raspi as well.
I am trying to get my bresser camera running in kstar, ekos and was able to mount it as an INDI webcam.
bresser-online.nl/Webwinkel-Product-4926...-Full-HD-Camera.html
The scope is a 240 mm 60 mm guide scope.
In INDI the camera is mounted as an indi webcam which gives a 720 pix resolution (it shows 5 mu instead of 3 mu pixels) and only supports raw format.
I can choose between 8 bit and 16 bith greyscale, but cant adapt the pixel size or resolution.
In astrodmx it show full HD (1080) via video4linux.
Although i am trying to fix the issues above (that is get correct pixel size and resolution), the main problem is that i cant find enough stars to guide on (imaging m31).
I have been able to find one of the moons of jupiter and guide on them for a bit but most of the frames are pitch black without any stars (not the usual grey as you find on the internet)
Is this camera not usable or am i missing some key factor?
Thanks in advance
Ept
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Hi All,
I am new to guiding and fairly new to raspi as well.
I am trying to get my bresser camera running in kstar, ekos and was able to mount it as an INDI webcam.
bresser-online.nl/Webwinkel-Product-4926...-Full-HD-Camera.html
The scope is a 240 mm 60 mm guide scope.
In INDI the camera is mounted as an indi webcam which gives a 720 pix resolution (it shows 5 mu instead of 3 mu pixels) and only supports raw format.
I can choose between 8 bit and 16 bith greyscale, but cant adapt the pixel size or resolution.
In astrodmx it show full HD (1080) via video4linux.
Although i am trying to fix the issues above (that is get correct pixel size and resolution), the main problem is that i cant find enough stars to guide on (imaging m31).
I have been able to find one of the moons of jupiter and guide on them for a bit but most of the frames are pitch black without any stars (not the usual grey as you find on the internet)
Is this camera not usable or am i missing some key factor?
Thanks in advance
Ept
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