/pifcap

Fast RAW image capture for Raspberry Pi

Primary LanguagePythonMIT LicenseMIT

pifcap - A GUI for fast RAW image capture on Raspberry Pi

This software allows you to capture RAW images on Raspberry Pi in a fast way. Typical application is Lucky Imaging in astro photography.

This software is still in development. It may not be functional. Please wait for the released version before you send issue reports.

Installation

The software is made for raspberry Pi with a recent OS (Bullseye or Bookworm).

Some packages need to be installed with sudo apt:

  • libcamera and libcamera-apps (if not already installed). You can test libcamera and the support for your camera with: 
    libcamera-hello --list-cameras
    You must be able to make RAW pictures in all modes. For instance libcamera-hello shows for the HQ camera: 
    0 : imx477 [4056x3040] (/base/soc/i2c0mux/i2c@1/imx477@1a)
  Modes: 'SRGGB10_CSI2P' : 1332x990 [120.05 fps - (696, 528)/2664x1980 crop]
         'SRGGB12_CSI2P' : 2028x1080 [50.03 fps - (0, 440)/4056x2160 crop]
                           2028x1520 [40.01 fps - (0, 0)/4056x3040 crop]
                           4056x3040 [10.00 fps - (0, 0)/4056x3040 crop]
    and you must be able to run these commands without errors: 
    libcamera-still -r --mode 1332:990 --shutter 100000 --gain 1 --awbgains 1,1 --immediate -o test.jpg
libcamera-still -r --mode 2028:1080 --shutter 100000 --gain 1 --awbgains 1,1 --immediate -o test.jpg
libcamera-still -r --mode 2028:1520 --shutter 100000 --gain 1 --awbgains 1,1 --immediate -o test.jpg
libcamera-still -r --mode 4056:3040 --shutter 100000 --gain 1 --awbgains 1,1 --immediate -o test.jpg
    Something with your libcamera or kernel driver installation will be wrong if this does not work.
  • Some Python packages require matching versions of system libraries. They must be installed with sudo apt:
sudo apt install python3-pip libcamera-apps python3-picamera2 python3-pyqt5 python3-pyqtgraph python3-astropy python3-numpy python3-venv

The Raspberry Pi OS "Bullseye" still allowed to install system wide with sudo pip install pifcap. Since "Bookworm" a virtual environment is required to install non-system Python packages. Trying to install pifcap without a virtual environment will fail with error: externally-managed-environment.

Run the following on a command line to install pifcapin a virtual environment called venv_pifcap:

python3 -m venv --system-site-packages ~/venv_pifcap
source ~/venv_pifcap/bin/activate
pip install --upgrade pip
pip install pifcap

Some hints when you get trouble

The Python packages picamera2, numpy, and astropy MUST be installed with sudo apt install. You MUST NOT update them with pip. When you get errors related to these packages you can:

  1. Check directory ~/.local/lib/python3.9/site-packages if it contains one of these packages. If yes delete them!
  2. Check if pip list shows different version numbers than apt list for these packages: 
    pip list | grep numpy
apt list | grep numpy

pip list | grep astropy
apt list | grep astropy

pip list | grep picamera2
apt list | grep picamera2
    If you see different versions for a package remove it with pip uninstall and reinstall it with sudo apt reinstall.
  3. Remove and recreate the virtual environment.

Uninstall

To remove pifcap from your Pi just delete the virtual environment:

rm -rf ~/venv_pifcap

Running

Before using pifcap you need to activate the virtual environment in the command window:

source ~/venv_pifcap/bin/activate

You can start graphical user interface of the capture program with:

pifcap

Images are stored in a proprietary format to minimize CPU load during capture. Conversion of the collected images to FITS format can be done with the command line program pifcap2fits. Run pifcap2fits -h to get help for the command options. For instance to convert all pfc files in the current directory to FITS do

pifcap2fits "*.pfc"

Different to linux commands the file name specifier must be quoted!