A couple of Multicam doubts and general help

reyalp

14110

Re: A couple of Multicam doubts and general help

« Reply #120 on: 03 / March / 2020, 22:20:26 »

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Quote from: ikercito on 03 / March / 2020, 07:53:08

But you know my syntax is not enough to get it working

The syntax to turn an LED on and off from multicam would be like

Code: [Select]

 !mc:cmdwait('call set_led(1,1)')
 !mc:cmdwait('call set_led(1,0)')

The first number specifies the LED, and the second specifies on or off. However, which number corresponds to which physical LED varies by camera model. For cameras with only 2 LEDs, usually 0 will be the power / status LED and 1 will be the AF. For others, you need to test.

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Additionally, my two cents regarding mc:connect({list='cams.txt'}) It's great in order to have a tidy list of cameras. But in the process, since I'm quite often adding/changing/having problems with some of the cameras, newly added cameras are ignored at connect. I think it would be ideal if it would (as and option maybe?) connect to all available cameras, and id known ones according to the table, and new ones randomly... Does this makes sense?

Being able to add cameras while keeping the IDs of known ones does make sense.

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EDIT: Something odd is going on with focusing distances. Setting it to 2000, brings it way beyond where it should be. Way past 4 meters, subject is at 2 meters and out of focus. For more precision I gave it a try with cameras zoomed in (shorter DOF) Values do not correspond with real life measurements. I'm puzzled. Here's a gallery with my beautiful test subject and attached is myfocustable.txt too.

I'm not sure what to make of this. As I said before, the number aren't super accurate, but I'd expect them to be a bit closer than your description suggests.

One thing to check is whether focus override is actually working. For example, if you take a series of shots with sd=10, sd=100, sd=1000, sd=10000
You can do this without involving myfocustable.txt

I'm not sure what the images in your gallery are supposed to show. I didn't look closely at all of them, but the ones I did don't seem to be terribly out of focus.

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ikercito

98

Re: A couple of Multicam doubts and general help

« Reply #121 on: 04 / March / 2020, 05:51:35 »

Quote from: reyalp on 03 / March / 2020, 22:20:26

The syntax to turn an LED on and off from multicam would be like
Code: [Select]
!mc:cmdwait('call set_led(1,1)') !mc:cmdwait('call set_led(1,0)')

I wanted to make it conditional,depending if they connected fine or not (is this a silly option?), thus the if connect=true then !mc:cmdwait('call set_led(1,1)') I think I can manage that by myself, will try later.

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Being able to add cameras while keeping the IDs of known ones does make sense.

That would be sweet

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I'm not sure what to make of this. As I said before, the number aren't super accurate, but I'd expect them to be a bit closer than your description suggests.
One thing to check is whether focus override is actually working. For example, if you take a series of shots with sd=10, sd=100, sd=1000, sd=10000
You can do this without involving myfocustable.txt
I'm not sure what the images in your gallery are supposed to show. I didn't look closely at all of them, but the ones I did don't seem to be terribly out of focus.

The gallery pics are the result of preshoot and writefocustable commands. They are in good focus, distances are shown in the table. What I wanted to show, is the disparity between numbers, given the known distance of the subject (about 2 meters to all of the cameras). There's cameras focused at 90cms and others at 3,5m... Focus override does work, I did tests and figures around 1000 and 1200 worked best generally, but some cameras were out of focus. To me it seems like setting a numeric distance to all of them is unreliable in order to get the best focus. I guess different models interpret these distances differently? I think I'm getting better focus with a simple preshoot and not setting it manually...

Quote from: reyalp on 03 / March / 2020, 21:56:42

What is the specific sequence of events that's triggering the error? Are you using the new zoom option on mc:shoot, or setting zoom as a standalone call to set_zoom()?
Are all of the cameras that are affected A2500? If so, are *all* of your A2500 affected, or just some?
What version of CHDK are you using?
The assert by itself may be be one we've seen before related to focus.

I'll check the version later, but it should be quite recent. The sequence is the one stated in #88. Connect, start, ID, init_sync and then call set_zoom (with the value stated in cli.readline). No camopts table yet, nor mc:shoot zoom... I did it the old fashioned way. Maybe they enter preshoot after init_sync and that causes problems? Regarding the romlog and the A2500s. It happens to 3 of them. Right now I'm not sure if I have more (there's a mix of 2400, 2500 and 2600) will check later, but it could be a model specific problem. In any case, is the assert too bad? are those cameras recoverable?

I'll keep you updated. Thanks
EDIT: It's version 1.4.1 5414. Correction it's two A2500 and one A2600, all have the same Romlog showing the assert mentioned before. And they keep crashing when zooming. The bunch of A2400 and A2300 (and the rest of the cameras) are working fine.

« Last Edit: 04 / March / 2020, 10:17:52 by ikercito »

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reyalp

14110

Re: A couple of Multicam doubts and general help

« Reply #122 on: 04 / March / 2020, 13:09:39 »

Quote from: ikercito on 04 / March / 2020, 05:51:35

I wanted to make it conditional,depending if they connected fine or not (is this a silly option?), thus the if connect=true then !mc:cmdwait('call set_led(1,1)') I think I can manage that by myself, will try later.

Maybe I'm missing something, but the command will never reach cameras that aren't connected.

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The gallery pics are the result of preshoot and writefocustable commands. They are in good focus, distances are shown in the table. What I wanted to show, is the disparity between numbers, given the known distance of the subject (about 2 meters to all of the cameras). There's cameras focused at 90cms and others at 3,5m... Focus override does work, I did tests and figures around 1000 and 1200 worked best generally, but some cameras were out of focus. To me it seems like setting a numeric distance to all of them is unreliable in order to get the best focus. I guess different models interpret these distances differently?

As I said, the values aren't very exact. I'm slightly surprised they're as far off as you've reported, but from your description it sounds like that's the explanation.

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I think I'm getting better focus with a simple preshoot and not setting it manually...

If you're worried about autofocus being reliable, you could start with the camera autofocus value, like your myfocustable.txt. That would let you keep the same distance for shots in the same session, and you could adjust manually in the file if some were off. You would probably want to start from autofocus again any time the zoom level changed.

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EDIT: It's version 1.4.1 5414. Correction it's two A2500 and one A2600, all have the same Romlog showing the assert mentioned before. And they keep crashing when zooming. The bunch of A2400 and A2300 (and the rest of the cameras) are working fine.

I'd suggest trying the 1.5 branch (so called "unstable"), as we fixed some issues related to zoom which cause a crash like this. Probably best to test on one camera before updating the whole rig.

Since the SD cards are already prepared, you can just download the zip from the autobuild http://mighty-hoernsche.de/trunk/ and upload the files with chdkptp. See https://chdk.setepontos.com/index.php?topic=11667.msg124777#msg124777 for an example of how to upload from multicam. Note since your rig has several different cameras, you need to be careful to only upload to cameras with the same model and canon firmware.

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ikercito

98

Re: A couple of Multicam doubts and general help

« Reply #123 on: 04 / March / 2020, 13:32:18 »

Quote from: reyalp on 04 / March / 2020, 13:09:39

Maybe I'm missing something, but the command will never reach cameras that aren't connected.

See? I'm SO clever sometimes...

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As I said, the values aren't very exact. I'm slightly surprised they're as far off as you've reported, but from your description it sounds like that's the explanation.

If you're worried about autofocus being reliable, you could start with the camera autofocus value, like your myfocustable.txt. That would let you keep the same distance for shots in the same session, and you could adjust manually in the file if some were off. You would probably want to start from autofocus again any time the zoom level changed.

Yeah, no doubt about it. I will basically have two zoom settings, and the general idea (once everything is working) is to create two presets, one for full body scans and one for face scans. Every detail will be set accordingly in two different tables... Someday...

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I'd suggest trying the 1.5 branch (so called "unstable"), as we fixed some issues related to zoom which cause a crash like this. Probably best to test on one camera before updating the whole rig.

Since the SD cards are already prepared, you can just download the zip from the autobuild http://mighty-hoernsche.de/trunk/ and upload the files with chdkptp. See https://chdk.setepontos.com/index.php?topic=11667.msg124777#msg124777 for an example of how to upload from multicam. Note since your rig has several different cameras, you need to be careful to only upload to cameras with the same model and canon firmware.

I will first update the faulty cameras and see how they respond. Eventually I will update all, but for the moment... will these work together with the older versions? As a side note, today I managed to detect a USB problem that was giving me headaches for the last couple of days. Hooray for me, it's been sorted. And most importantly, the LED on thing is VERY handy!

Edit: Quick and silly thing (i haven't really tested without it) but in CHDK/DATA folder I usually have multicam.0 and multicam.cfg, that are never present originally in the builds. These NEED to be there, right?
EDIT 2: OMG!!! They work!!! Thanks!!!!!!!

« Last Edit: 04 / March / 2020, 13:43:21 by ikercito »

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reyalp

14110

Re: A couple of Multicam doubts and general help

« Reply #124 on: 04 / March / 2020, 14:58:35 »

Quote from: ikercito on 04 / March / 2020, 13:32:18

I will first update the faulty cameras and see how they respond. Eventually I will update all, but for the moment... will these work together with the older versions?

Generally, having a mix 1.4 and 1.5 shouldn't be a problem. However, 1.5 also fixes some issues with USB stability where some cameras models would fail on transfers of certain sizes, so going to all 1.5 is probably a good idea.

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Edit: Quick and silly thing (i haven't really tested without it) but in CHDK/DATA folder I usually have multicam.0 and multicam.cfg, that are never present originally in the builds. These NEED to be there, right?

I'm not sure what these are, chdkptp multicam shouldn't(edit) care about them. Files like that would be created if you ran a script called multicam through the CHDK menu.

CHDK settings are kept in CHDK/*.cfg. You probably want to keep those.

« Last Edit: 04 / March / 2020, 15:06:38 by reyalp »

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Don't forget what the H stands for.

ikercito

98

Re: A couple of Multicam doubts and general help

« Reply #125 on: 06 / March / 2020, 07:36:35 »

It's probably from some script I used long time ago. I recicled the cards from back then, and left it just in case. Good to know that it's not needed. Regarding the update to 1.5, I've updated 5 problem cameras and for now, individually connected to the PC they're working great. Everything is smooth like this. I'm going to put them back in the rig, and see how they perform. Thanks for the tip

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ikercito

98

Re: A couple of Multicam doubts and general help

« Reply #126 on: 06 / March / 2020, 09:34:32 »

Something I found today. Do not rush the cameras. I've found that after shooting, if the camera is still busy writing to card and I send a zoom command, it will inevitably crash. I was worried about zooming, and I've been doing some thorough tests, since crashes were quite random. And that's what I found out. Not much, but if some cards are a tad slower than the others, give them some time to write, before sending any command. My two cents for today

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ikercito

98

Re: A couple of Multicam doubts and general help

« Reply #127 on: 14 / October / 2020, 07:30:41 »

Hi guys! After a few months on standby I'm retaking the project. I'd like to know if there's been any major updates to chdk and multicam since... March? (wow, it's been a long time!) I hope you're all doing great, thanks!

(last thing i did was update CHDK to 1.5 on most cameras)

« Last Edit: 14 / October / 2020, 08:20:07 by ikercito »

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reyalp

14110

Re: A couple of Multicam doubts and general help

« Reply #128 on: 14 / October / 2020, 15:06:32 »

Quote from: ikercito on 14 / October / 2020, 07:30:41

Hi guys! After a few months on standby I'm retaking the project. I'd like to know if there's been any major updates to chdk and multicam since... March? (wow, it's been a long time!) I hope you're all doing great, thanks!

(last thing i did was update CHDK to 1.5 on most cameras)

Not in multicam. The one feature I added was the ability to set the camera clocks (also requires updated CHDK)

In CHDK, there were some improvements to zoom control for digic 4 and later, making lens correction more likely and focus more likely to be kept through zoom changes without crashing. If your cameras are digic 4 or later, and you use set_zoom, this might be worth having.

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Don't forget what the H stands for.

ikercito

98

Re: A couple of Multicam doubts and general help

« Reply #129 on: 15 / October / 2020, 09:24:53 »

Ok, good to know!

Quote from: reyalp on 03 / March / 2020, 22:20:26

Being able to add cameras while keeping the IDs of known ones does make sense.

This little feature would make my life way easier, now that I'll be adding a few more cameras to the rig.

After so long on standby, it feels like I'm starting from scratch again, but it'll only take me a couple of days to be up and running. I'll keep posting new discoveries and issues (hope not too many of the latter). Thx.

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