QHY5, PHD2 and Linux...

[Mario Vecchi]

Hello!

I've been trying to get the linux version of PHD2 to connect to my QHY5 but keep getting an error along the lines of "Libusb failed to connect to camera QHY5". I'm running CentOS 6.5 on a fairly old machine but everything seems to be in order - any ideas? Am I supposed to load a driver at all?

Any help would be gratefully accepted!

Mario

[Andy Galasso]

Hi Mario,

I was kind of hoping some other Linux users would chime in with some ideas. Unfortunately I believe the number of Linux PHD2 users is very very small (perhaps zero, though I hope I am wrong.)  After some initial porting work a couple years ago there has been very little activity with PHD2 on Linux as far as I can tell. We have been making sure it builds on Linux, and I have been testing the Simulators on Linux, but personally I have never used it for guiding with real gear.

So unfortunately, unless someone else joins in with some ideas, you are probably on your own for diagnosing the problem. Please let us know what you find and we will do what we can to make any needed changes, or at least record the issues in the issue tracker for one of the current developers or any other volunteers who are willing to work on the problem.

Andy

[Hans]

I think in order to get some Linux momentum we need to get phd2 from the simulators to a minimum workable state so that it can actually be used.
I want to work on that but find my time too limited to be of actual use so far. Also I don't want to work on this alone.
To that end I've set up an irc discussion channel at freenode (irc://irc.freenode.net/#phd) some time ago to facilitate phd2 user and developer chat.
Yesterday a linux user visited the irc channel asking why INDI does not work. I think that'd be an excellent target for the 'minimum workable state'.
The QHY5 with its integrated guide port being another 'minimum workable state'. (I don't have that hardware though).
The INDI code in branches/openphd1/ was sadly removed from trunk. I'm not sure if INDI changed in the mean time or how easily it can
be ported back in, but we're actually trying it right now.

-- Hans

[kkretzsch]

Hi,

I'm using the PHD version of branches/openphd1 on my Linux Laptop and fully appreciated any activities to port PHD2 on Linux with INDI.

>I'm not sure if INDI changed in the mean time or how easily it can...

I tested the newest INDI version (trunc) and unfortunately openphd1 is currently not working with the trunk and most probably also not with version 0.9.8

due to some minor changes in indiguiderinterface.cpp. After reverting this change everything went well again.

Currently the incompatibility between the old PHD version and INDI is not that big, but as time goes by it will become more and more difficult to do the porting.

--Klaus 

[Andy Galasso]

Klaus,

All PHD2 development is happening on the trunk branch, and there is no intention of maintaining the openphd1 branch. The path forward is to have a single version of phd2 that works with Linux, Windows and OSX. Hans recently made some changes to get INDI working again on trunk, have you tried phd2 (trunk) with INDI?

Andy

[Hans]

Hi Klaus, Andy,

I'm actually porting Geoffrey's work on branches/openphd1/ into trunk/ . The INDI basics including Camera support got committed 2 days ago and I'm preparing the mount control for later tonight (mount control is working :).

First we have to fix the following :

[20:26:51] <phdBB> build #4 of H__buntu started, including [825]
[20:27:04] <phdBB> build #4 of H__buntu is complete: Failure [failed compile]  Build details are at http://gcc10.fsffrance.org:8011/builders/H__buntu/builds/4  blamelist: andy

;-)

The buildbot reports results on the irc channel. The stdio build details show the issue is :

/home/phd2/buildslave/H__buntu/source/myframe.cpp: In function ‘bool load_multi_darks(GuideCamera*, const wxString&)’:
/home/phd2/buildslave/H__buntu/source/myframe.cpp:1459:17: error: ‘auto_ptr’ is not a member of ‘std’
                 std::auto_ptr<usImage> img(new usImage());
                 ^
/home/phd2/buildslave/H__buntu/source/myframe.cpp:1459:38: error: expected primary-expression before ‘>’ token
                 std::auto_ptr<usImage> img(new usImage());
                                      ^
/home/phd2/buildslave/H__buntu/source/myframe.cpp:1459:57: error: ‘img’ was not declared in this scope
                 std::auto_ptr<usImage> img(new usImage());
                                                         ^

Andy : we can sure use help on the irc channel to fix this one.

-- Hans

[Hans]

update: I fixed above (3) issues. continuing on indi/mounts now
-- Hans

[kkretzsch]

Hi Hans, Andy,
that sounds great. As soon as there is something to test let me know.

@Hans: The recent change in indiguiderinterface.cpp (http://sourceforge.net/p/indi/code/1248/) does not work with the current implementation  of libindiclient in openphd1 branch. This INDI change assumes that a pulse guiding request in one direction North/South (West/East) is an atomic operation, i.e. when guiding in one direction (e.g. north) it is in the responsibility of the   guiding software to set the duration of the opposite direction (here south) to 0. (both directions are stored in a vector).

Klaus

[Hans]

Hi Klaus,

Thanks ! We should indeed upgrade the libindiclient in phd2. We're gathering forces on the #phd channel at the freenode irc network to work on this.

-- Hans

[Steve Cookson]

Hi Guys,

It's been some years since this post.  Is there any news of QHY5/PHD2 running on Linux?

I'm sitting here with a QHY5 and PHD2 is giving me "Libusb failed to open camera QHY5.".

Currently I have an old webcam and a home build guiding system, but it would be nice to get a step up here.

Regards,

Steve

[Andy Galasso]

Hi Steve,

It's best to open a new discussion topic rather than re-open a 3 1/2 year old thread. If you post in a new topic it will give people who go searching for QHY5 (like you did) in the future a new discussion thread to look at from 2017 rather than having to wade through a bunch of obsolete information from 2014.

To answer your question: with the current versions of phd2 your best bet is to use INDI to connect to the camera. Although we have a native QHY camera access mode for PHD2 it only supports newer QHY cameras and not the QHY5.

Please give INDI a try and if that does not work do let us know.

Andy