Tether

A GUI to capture images from cameras tethered to a computer USB.

If something seems to be wrong, it probably is, but check ISSUES.md before reporting on Github.

Installation and Usage

As Tether is currently considered in alpha stage of development, you can only run it by getting a copy of this repository either through Git or downloading a zip file. Both can be obtained from https://github.com/rafasgj/tether Once you downloaded it, it is suggested that you try it using a Python virtual environment:

$ python3 -m venv .venv
$ . .venv/bin/activate

Install it with pip:

$ pip install -e .[deps]

If everything went fine, you can start it with:

$ tether

Displaying Captured Images

Images captured by tether are just saved to the selected directory. You may use utils/image_monitor.py to display the last captured image:

$ pip install -e .[deps]
$ pip install -r utils/requirements.txt
$ python utils/image_monitor.py

You may pass a directory path to image_monitor so that directory is the one that will be monitored, and can be used as the target directory in tether.

Dependencies

Libgphoto2

Gphoto2 is composed of a command-line utility and a shared library with functions that allow controlling a camera connected to the computer. It must be installed, before the Python modules. Use the latest available for your package manager. You will also need the development files for libgphoto2 (libgphoto2-devel or libgphoto2-dev) and the Python header files available (from package python3-devel or python3-dev).

Python Modules

Tether requires Python 3, which is available on almost every Linux distribution, can be easily installed on Windows, and might require the use of a package manager like Homebrew if you have any, but the most recent, version of macOS.

Pure Python dependencies may be installed with PIP, by issuing

python3 -m pip install -U -r requirements.txt

You might need to change from 'python3' to 'python' depending on your operating system and/or configuration.

GTK+ 3

Under Python, GTK+ 3 implementations uses GObject instrospection, and it must be available before installyng pygobject.

For Linux, most distributions have PyGObject in their main package repositories, but I recommend installing the dependencies through the package manager, and pygobject through PIP.

The following development packages are required to install PyGObject: * cairo * gobject-introspection * cairo-gobject

For macOS see MACOS.md

LibMagic

It is used to identify which type of image is to be captured from camera and displayed. You probably have it installed on your Linux machine, you might need to install it under other operating systems.

ExifTool

Phil Harvey's ExifTool is an amazing tool to deal with image EXIF metadata, and is used to extract embedded images from RAW files. This is much faster than applying a demosaic algorithm to the RAW files, and provide a similar view as in the camera LCD monitor.

Optional Dependencies

This software has some dependencies that might help on its use, but are not mandatory. These dependencies often show as optional dependencies of libraries and components used.

Gnome Virtual File System - gvfs
Udisks2