AstroDMx Capture – Known Issues

Wayland Compatibility Issues

Some users may experience anomalies when running AstroDMx Capture under Wayland (e.g. blank or non-responsive output). These problems are due to fundamental incompatibilities between wxWidgets and Wayland. This problem is particularly evident if you have multiple monitors.

This limitation will be fully resolved in AstroDMx Capture Version 3, which is being ported to the Qt6 framework with full Wayland support.

Workaround: If you experience problems with AstroDMx Capture under Linux, we recommend installing a non-Wayland desktop environment (based on X11/Xorg) alongside your usual environment and using that when running AstroDMx Capture or to disconnect all but one monitor.

Mount Date/Time/Daylight Settings

AstroDMx Capture automatically calculates the correct date and time values which includes the appropriate daylight saving offset. It is therefore important to make sure that the mount hand controller’s daylight saving setting is not switched on. If daylight saving is active on the mount’s hand controller, then objects could be missed by 15 degrees.

MacOS – SV205C

Due to an issue with the camera’s firmware, the SVBONY SV205C on macOS only works when connected to a USB2 port. In order to use this camera on macOS, it is vital that the camera is connected via USB2. This can be achieved by using a USB2 hub or by plugging directly into a USB2 port if one exists on the computer.

SVBONY has been informed about this problem, so hopefully there will be a firmware update to fix this problem soon.

MacOS – Apple Silicon Installation

A number of users have reported that after downloading the Apple Silicon build of AstroDMx Capture, it reports that the app bundle is corrupt. It is not corrupt but is being incorrectly reported so by Apple. After further investigation, it appears that this is because AstroDMx is not notarised by Apple and that this is a requirement for Apple Silicon applications.

Unfortunately, Apple Notarisation requires a significant yearly financial payment to Apple and, as AstroDMx Capture is made available free of charge, this cost cannot be justified.

Fortunately, there is a simple solution to this problem. The procedure is as follows:

Double click on the downloaded AstroDMx Capture DMG file
Drag AstroDMx Capture.app into /Applications
Launch a terminal and type the following:
xattr -cr /Applications/AstroDMx*
Press enter

Once the above procedure is complete, AstroDMx Capture should run correctly.

INDI Cameras

The INDI camera implementation should be considered to be a “work in progress”. Currently, there are a number of limitations and known problems.

For maximum stability and fast frame rates, it is recommended to connect cameras via the native implementation. As all INDI functionality can be used independently, it is possible to use the mount control functionality with a camera that is connected using a native implementation.

The INDI camera implementation will be improved in a future release.

ChromeOS

It appears that the latest updates for ChromeOS have broken USB3 camera support for some camera types. Our tests show that if a USB2 cable is connected to a USB3 camera then the camera appears to work correctly. If a USB3 camera does not stream correctly in ChromeOS then using a USB2 cable may fix the problem. We will update this article when more information becomes available.

Currently, the upcoming SVBONY SV505C camera does NOT work in ChromeOS.

Due to limitations associated with the virtualisation environment within ChromeOS, it is not guaranteed that any camera will work reliably under ChromeOS. It is advantageous to use a relatively powerful Chromebook when running AstroDMx Capture. Entry level Chromebooks lack the required power to run Linux in the virtual environment as well as the extra workload introduced when using USB pass-through.

QHY Cameras – All versions with the latest QHY SDK

There seems to be an issue with the latest version of the QHY SDK which sometimes causes a segmentation fault. This issue has been observed with the QHY5L-II range of cameras on both x86-64 Linux and the Raspberry Pi.

If the camera’s connection is interrupted, for example being accidentally disconnected while the camera is streaming, then AstroDMx Capture sometimes generates a segmentation fault and then closes. This issue will be reported to QHY and a maintenance release will be made once a new SDK is made available.

In order to reduce the possibility of a segmentation fault, it is best to use a high quality USB cable that makes a good connection to the camera hardware.

Ubuntu 22.04 – All Versions of AstroDMx Capture

Updated: 30 April 2023

Important: This issue has been fixed in version 1.4.x.x for Intel builds but the problem is now evident in the ARM64 builds. This will be fixed in the next version.

I have had a number of bug reports associated with running AstroDMx on Ubuntu 22.04. I have tested this and can confirm that AstroDMx does not start under this configuration. It is, however, very easy to fix this problem.

This particular problem is caused by Ubuntu 22.04 providing newer dependencies which are incompatible with some dependencies supplied by AstroDMx. The dependencies in question are those that provide specific functions in the standard C++ library.

In order to run the software under Ubuntu 22.04, use the following procedure.

cd /opt/AstroDMx-Capture/lib
rm libstdc++.so.6
rm libgcc_s.so.1

Once the above procedure has been completed, AstroDMx should start normally. This problem will be fixed in the next release of the software. The latest version of AstroDMx Capture can be downloaded from the main downloads page.

As usual, please feel free to contact me directly if you need further help.