Tag Archives: oaCapture

oacapture 1.6.0 released

Well, it’s been something of a slog getting here, partly because I’ve been spending quite a bit of time building my observatory, but 1.6.0 is finally released!

Changes in this release include:

  • Update ZWO SDK to v1.14.0227
  • Update Altair SDK to v32.13483
  • Update Toupcam SDK to v33.13725
  • Integrate with libqhyccd v4.0.16
  • Merge code common to oacapture and oalive
  • Support CMYG output in SER files (for colour Lodestar and possibly others)
  • Add support for building on 64-bit ARM
  • Re-enable support for legacy Altair cameras dropped from recent SDKs by including a previous SDK
  • Support ROI and binning for the Lodestar
  • Support ROI and binning for Point Grey cameras
  • Add support for the Brightstar Quantum filter wheel (possibly also the Orion Nautilus?)
  • Plenty of bugfixes

I’ve expanded the number of pre-built binaries available to include quite a few new 32-bit ARM Ubuntu releases as well as a 64-bit ARM Ubuntu release alongside the usual MacOS and 64-bit Intel Linux releases.

There has been a huge restructuring of the code in this release as well. One of the motivations for that was just to make the code base easier to work on, but it should also make sharing code between oacapture, oalive and other applications that do similar but different things much easier.

Now time to start on 1.7.0 🙂

oacapture 1.5.0 released

As we approach the winter solstice, it’s time for a new release…

Major changes for this release include:

  • Update to latest ZWO camera SDK
  • Add support for ZWO filter wheels
  • Make the handling of ROI/cropping cleaner
  • Improve handling of FITS files
  • Added support for the Lodestar X2
  • Try to fix slow start-up/shutdown on MacOS
  • Allow a settings file to be specified on the command line
  • Attempt to fix handling of the Neximage 10
  • Add support for Touptek, Altair and Mallincam cameras when the manufacturer’s software is also installed
  • Update user manual

And there are quite a few bugfixes, too.

Binary downloads (DMG files for OSX, .deb and .rpm files for Linux) from the downloads page. Source is available from github.

I don’t have builds for Ubuntu 16.04 and Ubuntu 18.04 on 32-bit ARM processors yet. Hopefully that’s coming soon when I can get OS images that work.

oacapture 1.4.0 released

Just in time for the end of the winter, oacapture 1.4.0 is here.

In the main this release is to improve the handling of video modes and simplify the UI a little, though there is also an update to the ASI SDK for support of more recent cameras and there are always bugfixes.

Binary downloads (DMG files for OSX, .deb and .rpm files for Linux) from the downloads page. Source is available from github.

oacapture 1.3.0 released

Just in time for Christmas, oacapture 1.3.0 is now available to download.

Major changes for this release include:

  • The latest ZWO SDK for ASI cameras and updates so the application has more knowledge of newer cameras.
  • Support for the QHY IMG132E. Mostly just to see if I could do it
  • Improved handling for the QHY5-II and QHY5L-II
  • Support for turning camera controls on and off where available

If you have a Touptek, Altair or Mallincam camera on Linux and the vendor-supplied application is installed in the default location then oacapture should be able to use that to support the same cameras, which is a bit neater than previous attempts to handle these cameras. For Altair I’d recommend using the most recent beta release of their software. I’m still working on finding a neat way to do this on OSX.

There are also numerous other small enhancements and bugfixes.

Binary downloads (DMG files for OSX, .deb and .rpm files for Linux) from the downloads page. Source is available from github.

oacapture 1.2.0 released

The new release of oacapture is finally available.

In the main this is a bugfix release, but there are some notable changes too. The ASI SDK version has been updated to the 0.6.0901 release and the ffmpeg libraries to version 3. Translations to Spanish have also been added.

The handling of camera controls has been completely reworked to fit better with the functionality of IIDC and GigE cameras, but unfortunately that does mean that existing camera settings will be lost.

Support for more FITS headers has also been added. Almost eighty outstanding issues have been cleared with this version (but don’t worry, there are plenty more 🙂

Sources have now been moved to github, so please create an issue there for any problems.

Binary downloads are on the downloads page. Where else?

oacapture-1.1.0 released

It’s been a long time coming, but v1.1.0 is finally here. There are quite a few changes, though many of them won’t be visible to the casual observer. For instance, the build system has been made more robust and internal copies of libraries updated to fix a few problems on systems with older libraries. The more obvious bugfixes and enhancements include:

  • RPM and DEB format binary packages for Linux
  • Use the latest version of the ASI SDK (0.6.0504)
  • Support for PNG output
  • Enable building against Qt5
  • Increase usbfs memory available for ASI cameras
  • The default position of the controls is now to the right of the preview pane
  • FITS output is enabled for 8-bit RGB frames
  • TIFF format output should be allowed for colour cameras
  • 16-bit greyscale UVC cameras should be supported
  • A problem with the exposure time setting in the text file is fixed
  • A problem with slow exposures of over 999ms has been fixed
  • The “hide controls” option has been removed as the window splitter handle now supports this function

Remember on Linux that you need to add your user to the “users” group before many USB cameras will work. Linux users will also need to install the DEB/RPM files for libasicamera (which is a packaged version of the ASI SDK) and libuvc. These are also available on the downloads page.

My intention is to put the sources on Github shortly. If possible, please report issues on the Github issues tracker as it will enable me to keep track of things more easily.

oacapture 1.0.0 released

This is a little rushed as I want to get it out before taking a break, but it’s time for the 1.0.0 release. I think we’re at that point now. So, what’s changed?

The bad news is that things have become fairly hairy with the build tree, even compared with previous releases. This is partly to incorporate new libraries for cameras based on Touptek hardware and partly because a bleeding edge release of libdc1394 is required to support some of the newer Point Grey IIDC-over-USB cameras. The build works for me, but it might be really quite painful on other systems.

Changes include…

  • Implementation of a GPS-based camera control and timer mechanism to timestamp (FITS) files. This uses some bespoke hardware that hopefully I’ll be able to talk more about later, but the intention is to be able to accurately timestamp images for occultations
  • Allow sub-millisecond exposure times
  • ASI camera library update (to the May 2016 release)
  • Add support for Touptek cameras
  • Update support for newer ZWO cameras
  • Enable the ASI2 interface
  • Allow UtVideo codec to be disabled
  • Load the shared library for the Point Grey GigE cameras at runtime, so a single executable should work fine whether you have the library or not
  • Ditto with the Touptek cameras
  • Fix “directory not writable” error with FITS/TIFF files
  • Fix problem with 16-bit SER file format
  • Allow capture to MOV and TIFF files from raw colour if the output data is demosaicked

And there are a few other bugfixes too.

The ASI2 interface I’m not entirely happy with. It probably should still be considered experimental at this stage. Neither would I describe the Toupcam support as “complete” as there are one or two areas I’m not entirely happy about because the documentation isn’t 100% clear. I’m (still) waiting for a response from Touptek support on those. It’s pretty much there though.

Building releases is a slow process, so I’ve initially uploaded the OSX release and the sources. I’ll add binaries for Linux systems as I get them built. This may take a little while as the installation is getting rather more complex now.

oaCapture on El Capitan

There appear to be some problems with oaCapture on El Capitan. I’m still trying to run these to ground. I know this affects the ZWO cameras, but I haven’t tested any others yet. It looks as though Apple have fiddled with the USB layer a fair bit between Yosemite and El Capitan and code that works on all 64-bit systems from Snow Leopard to Yosemite is now broken 🙁

At the moment I’m afraid I don’t have an ETA for fixing this. Some workarounds for part of the problem have been added to libusb, but they don’t completely resolve the issues. I’m continuing to work on it.

oaCapture 0.8.0 release

Second release in a month! (By the skin of my teeth 🙂

That does mean there aren’t too many new features in this one. The main changes are partial support for the Celestron Neximage cameras and potentially Imaging Source USB2 CMOS cameras, support for the cooler controls in ZWO ASI cameras and support for Point Grey GigE cameras. There are also bugfixes for the ARM7 build, Point Grey IIDC cameras, the limit selection box not functioning intuitively on OSX and a few others.

I have tested the Neximage Burst C on Linux and OSX. On Linux it appears to work fine. On my (non-unibody) Mac Mini it appears to work fine on both Snow Leopard and Yosemite. However, on my 13″ 2013 Macbook Pro it appears to lock up the USB subsystem completely which requires a reboot to restore it regardless of which OSX release is used. I thought this was a hardware compatibility problem, but booting the MBP into Linux allows the camera to work happily, so it looks like some strange issue with OSX on my MBP. There do seem to be a number of reports of people experiencing hangs with USB devices on the 2013 13″ MBP, so it may just be my model. I would suggest however that if you’re going to give this camera a try on OSX, make sure all other applications are closed first and be prepared to have to turn off the power to recover the machine if it hangs.

The Burst M is untested but I believe it should work as well as the Burst C. The Neximage 5 may work with restricted functionality or may not work at all. Other Neximage cameras are not supported by this release.

The Imaging Source USB2 CMOS cameras (DFK22, DFK42, DFK72 and their mono counterparts) may work as the Neximage cameras are based on some of these models, with the same caveats for OSX.

ZWO cooler support is obviously not properly tested as the production cameras are not yet available.

At the moment Point Grey GigE cameras are supported using their Flycapture2 SDK. I can’t distribute this, so anyone wishing to use it will need to download and install the latest version themselves. You’ll then either need to build from source (the build system will find the libraries and use them if they’re present) or I can perhaps make binaries available that are linked against the necessary shared objects. I believe mono cameras should work, but colour cameras are not tested.

Feedback on which of these cameras work or don’t and particularly which Apple hardware the Celestron/Imaging Source cameras work on will be gratefully received.

Downloads from the page linked above.