Today, pretty much by accident, I stumbled over qastrocam-g2. It’s an astro-imaging capture application for Linux. Thus far I’ve been muddling through with SharpCap, which is absolutely no criticism of that application at all. I just really can’t get on with Windows. I’ve used UNIX, Linux and other UNIX-like operating systems for over twenty-five years and Windows is just completely alien to my thinking.
The application claims to support QHY5 and QHY6 cameras natively as well as the SPC900, and to support cameras via the V4L2 interface (the PWC driver for the SPC900 kind of claims to be V4L2, but it’s exceptionally non-standard).
Anyhow, whilst qtastrocam-g2 gives the impression of being potentially moribund, source for the beta of the latest release is available from SourceForge, so I downloaded it and tried to build it on one of my Ubuntu 11.04 machines. I needed to install quite a few packages to get through the configuration steps. I started with these and they pulled in a whole heap of others:
- libv4l-dev
- libqwtplot3d-qt3-dev
- libusb-dev
- libcfitsio3-dev
- libavifile-0.7-dev
After that I needed to patch all those files including the linux/videodev.h header to instead include linux/videodev2.h and libv4l1-videodev.h. I have a patch file for this, but I need to tweak wordpress to allow me to display it without mangling all the ‘<‘ and ‘>’ symbols. That done, everything went pretty smoothly.
First impressions are that it’s competent and fairly well done, though I couldn’t get the debayering to work. That is a bit strange on the SPC900 anyhow, so I may just have been doing things wrong. I’ll be using a different SPC900 for testing though, so I shan’t worry about that just yet. It does appear to support the SPC900 well, but newer cameras such as the Xbox Live and Lifecam Cinema are missing the V4L2 extended controls. I may well look at integrating those myself later.
Clear sky is forecast for this evening though the way the rain is presently hurling itself against my window does make me doubt the word of the Met Office. If it does turn out nice again however, I shall be giving the application a field test on Mars and Saturn tonight.
Hello,
Congratulation for your blog. I am fairly new to linux and am seeking some advice: I am looking for a soft working under (K)Ubuntu 12.04 doing webcam capture for astronomical purposes compatible with modified webcams: I have an SPC900 webcam with modified sensor (B&W) working in raw mode. Everything was working fine under Ubuntu 11.10 but since I upgraded to 12.04, I noticed that no soft can handle that camera as I end up with a system failure everytime I try and change the camera settings. I tried with wxastrocapture and qastrocam-g2 with no success. Note that a conventional webcam works fine with those soft. Also, my modified camera works fine under windows XP. Have you experienced the same issue with your camera upon upgrading to 12.04 ?
Thanks for your help,
Emmanuel
To the best of my knowledge the Linux SPC900 driver is way behind the V4L2 spec. and doesn’t work properly. qastrocam-g2 does a lot of heavy lifting to get the camera to work properly and it’s entirely possible that has broken with the v3 kernel in 12.04. The same might apply to wxAstrocapture though I’ve not seen the source for that.
I have no intention of upgrading beyond Ubuntu 11.04 though. The new Unity and Gnome 3 interfaces might be fine for some people but for me they just slow things down and get in the way all the time. I am clearly no longer part of Ubuntu’s “target audience” and will be jumping ship when I find a suitable alternative.
“I am clearly no longer part of Ubuntu’s ‘target audience’ and will be jumping ship when I find a suitable alternative.”
I suggest you try Distro Astro http://www.distroastro.org
It’s based on Ubuntu without the Unity interface and with astronomy packages like INDI preinstalled.
Hello!
Thank you for your article! Right now I am trying all sort of astroimaging software under linux. I am trying to compile qastrocam-g2 but got stuck with v4l… Please, expand this part:
”After that I needed to patch all those files including the linux/videodev.h header to instead include linux/videodev2.h and libv4l1-videodev.h. I have a patch file for this, but I need to tweak wordpress to allow me to display it without mangling all the ‘’ symbols. That done, everything went pretty smoothly”
I only made a symbolic link from /usr/include/libv4l1-videodev.h to /usr/include/linux/videodev.h. Less errors but still stuck… Can you help me please?
I can certainly try. I’ll have to find which machine I ended up getting the software built on, but as soon as I’ve worked out what changes were required I’ll let you know.
Ok, what I did was as follows:
Edit the files
qastrolib/QCamV4L2.hpp,qastrolib/QCamV4LbestDevice.cpp,qastrolib/QCamV4L.hppandqastrolib/QCamVesta.hpp. Replace the line:#include <linux/videodev.h></code>with
I’d not recommend symlinking the header files around at all. It isn’t them that’s broken, after all. It’s the software that isn’t compatible with newer kernel releases, so it’s the software that should be changed.
Hello !
I’m the qastrocam-g2’s author. I was very busy this year, so qastrocam-g2 wasn’t maintained. I will try to upgrade qastrocam-g2 a bit this summer. The last beta compiles now on ubuntu 12.04. I will try to make the philips and QHY5 cameras running on this LTS. The last kernel doesn’t support V4L1 any more, thus, the last pwc driver, fully V4L2 compliant, has changed a lot. I have to rewrite all my code handling the philips cameras.
Stay tuned on the qastrocam-g2’s source forge page.
Best regards !
Thank you for taking the time to comment. I’m keen to see as much astro imaging software on Linux as possible, so I’m pleased to hear that you’re still working on it.