I’m not as happy with this release as I could be and it feels like it’s taken far more work than the list of changes suggests, but I need to draw a line somewhere so here it is.

Changes include a fair number of bugfixes, support for 64-bit values in the camera controls, cleaning up of the code so it generates no compile warnings in “extra-picky” mode (which probably fixes a few bugs in itself), support on Linux for Xagyl and Starlight Xpress filter wheels and fixes for problems with the QHY5L-II and FireWire cameras on OSX.

Support for the Xagyl and SX filter wheels should be sorted on OSX for the next release, if I can get it done in time. I’d quite like to try keeping up with a monthly release rather than having arbitrary delays because functionality isn’t complete.

Downloads are, rather obviously, on the downloads page.

I’m now down to the final testing for this next release after which I just have to build the distributions, update the manual and we’re good to go. If things go well that might mean sometime this coming weekend.

Well, it’s been a time coming, but I think 0.0.9 is finally done. I skipped 0.0.8 as I’d made an intermediate release available to a few people with that number.

Major changes for this release include:

• Support for making the control panes dockable, moving them to the right hand side of the display or hiding them altogether, all of which will hopefully make the application a little more usable on smaller displays though I think there’s still work to be done there.
• Full support for the ZWO USB3 cameras with the latest release of their SDK library
• Inclusion of a new release of libusb
• Inclusion of a new release of libuvc. I actually spent some time working on changes for this library to merge some of my enhancements and bugfixes back with those from a number of other people to produce a single set of sources which I’m pleased to say Ken has merged back into his master sources.
• Some support for UVC webcams with YUYV video output streams
• Support for FireWire cameras using IEEE1394/IIDC/DCAM

There are quite a few bugfixes too. There are still some niggles on OSX with the FireWire cameras that I may not have got fully sorted yet. In particular my Mavericks MacBook Pro whines about timeouts with a FireWire camera connected using the Thunderbolt adaptor and I haven’t got to the bottom of that yet.

I haven’t updated the documentation yet. I shall get that done as soon as I can. I think the only major changes are the new options for moving the control panes.

Two releases in a month. The weather must have been bad 🙂

The major additions for this release are support for the Imaging Source USB cameras on OSX and for IEEE1394/IIDC/DCAM cameras on both Linux and OSX. The latter group includes the Point Grey Firefly MV which I have tested (in mono) and also the Point Grey Chameleon and Atik GP which I have not tested. It may well be that all sorts of FireWire cameras also work, but I have none to test and a little fiddling may be required with permissions to get things going. As it is there’s a udev rules file for these cameras on Linux to make the devices readable and writable.

That seems to be one short paragraph that covers an awful lot of work…

Other changes include the addition of controls to enable/disable auto mode for gain and exposure.

My DMK21.618 claims it can do 60fps, but fails miserably with broken frames. That may be a firmware issue, but 30fps seems to work fine.

The same caveats apply for OSX as with the 0.0.6 release. ASI120 cameras may need a firmware change to work, and if you’re building from source it may help to know that I used macports for my build and in particular the qt4-mac, yasm, pkgconfig and tiff packages.

Another month, another new release 😀

There are some bugfixes for handling of cameras in this release. These mainly relate to exposure times, but there are small improvements for all of the supported cameras.

The major changes however are restructuring the code to integrate with GNU autotools for building and support for OSX. I can only test cameras on Mavericks, but I believe the binaries should work on 64-bit Snow Leopard, Lion and Mountain Lion. The cameras currently supported are the ZWO ASI range, the QHY5 and the QHY5L-II. The USB2 versions of the ASI120 require a firmware change to work with USB on some (perhaps all) Mac hardware. The firmware and uploader (which I believe only works on Windows at the moment) are available from the ZWO website.

If you’re attempting to build the sources on OSX then it may help to know that I used macports fairly heavily and in particular the packages qt4-mac, yasm, pkgconfig and tiff are required.

Plans for the next release are a little vague at the moment. I’ve had a request to add support for one of the Point Grey cameras and as they do provide an SDK that’s definitely under consideration if I can get my head around it in time. Making the Imaging Source cameras work on OSX is possible (I already have the camera library recognising that a TIS camera is present). I didn’t make a start on filter wheel support for 0.0.6 and I really would like to get somewhere with that for the next release too.