oacapture/oalive 1.7.0 released

Each time I do this it seems to get more difficult. Perhaps more regular releases might be the solution, or doing a more limited beta release. Testing has become nigh on impossible beyond a small range of hardware, so there may be problems. Regardless, thirteen months after 1.6.0, oacapture and oalive 1.7.0 are finally released!

Changes in this release include:

  • Update QHY support to latest release 200522 (200424 for MacOS)
  • Update Mallincam support to latest release (43.15988)
  • Update ASI camera support to latest release (1.15.0430)
  • Update Toupcam support to latest release (46.17118)
  • Update ASI filter wheel support to latest release (0.4.1022)
  • Add support for Orion Starshoot G2 cameras
  • Add support for Risingcam cameras (using libnncam)
  • Add support for DSLRs (oalive only)
  • Add oalive to package for Linux (it’s a separate image for MacOS)
  • Dynamically load support libraries if they are present
  • Allow SER files larger than 2.1GB on 32-bit systems
  • Much tidying of code internally
  • Improved support for 16-bit frames

I’ve also added a new “named pipe” output file mode. The intention is that it should be possible to use this to create a video stream to upload to youtube or Facebook, for example, but beyond actually writing data to the named pipe I’ve done no further work on this as yet.

Unfortunately there’s no 64-bit ARM release at the moment because my 64-bit RPi seems to have had a meltdown.

oalive is a (fairly basic, for the time being) separate EAA-style application that can do image stacking with a number of different stacking methods, but doesn’t do image alignment for the moment. It has some DSLR support, but I’ve only been able to test it with a Canon 1100D and even then not as much as I’d like. In theory it should support other Canon cameras as well as other makes if they’re supported by libgphoto2, but I can’t guarantee that it won’t set your hair/camera on fire, burn down your house or steal your firstborn. oalive is also lacking a manual for the time being. Hopefully it’s straightforward enough to work through, but I’ll get around to the documentation soon.

At the moment I’m not decided about plans for the next release other than adding support for Omegon cameras. I’m sure other things will suggest themselves in time, and I’ll try to make the next release a little sooner.