rpicam-still timing out at night after 2024.12.06_04 upgrade

[DarKOrange75]

Hi all,

I had to downgrade to the previous version since after the installation of 2024.12.06_04 rpicam-still was timing out during night exposition (but working well during day time).

I am runing Allsky on a raspberry pi 4B with 1GB of memory.

Has anybody experienced the same issue?

Thank you.

[EricClaeys]

Do you still have a log file from when it timed out? /var/log/allsky.log.1 perhaps. It's going to be impossible to debug without a log file.

In v2024.12.06_04 a timeout will occur if rpicam-still doesn't return 15 seconds (?) after the exposure was supposed to end. So, for a 10 second exposure, it will timeout in 25 seconds. This was added to catch cases where rpicam-still never returned, which hung Allsky. It's possible that 15 seconds isn't a long enough wait, but on a PI 4 that's hard to imagine.

[DarKOrange75]

I ran the command manually and increased the time out and it worked.

It’s a PI 4 but with only 1GB

I’ll see tonight if I can find the log file.

[EricClaeys]

@DarKOrange75,
How did you manually change the timeout? In allsky/src/capture_RPi.cpp? That's where it's defined. If so, what did you increase it to? And did you do this while running v2024.12.06_04 or an earlier release? Which earlier release?

If you are not running v2024.12.06_04, would you be willing to reinstall it, then after it times out at night, follow the instructions on the WebUI's "Getting Support" page and upload the support log?
You can easily go back to the prior release via cd ~/allsky; ./install.sh --restore which will put the _04 release in ~/allsky/allsky-v2024.12.06_04 so we can easily compare it to the prior release.

[DarKOrange75]

I copied the following command from the log file and increased the timeout value to 150:

timeout 90 rpicam-still --thumb none --output '/home/pi/allsky/tmp/image-20250709002734.jpg' --timeout 1 --nopreview --width 4056 --height 3040 --shutter 60000000 --analoggain 1.47973 --awbgains 2,2 --quality 100 --metadata '/home/pi/allsky/tmp/metadata.txt' --metadata-format txt

Unfortunatly the log file has been deleted.

OK I'll try to reinstall it and I'll post the log file

[DarKOrange75]

@EricClaeys here is the log file.

You can clearly see that everything goes well during the end of day light but at a certain point after sunset, rpicam-still ti
mes out.

allsky_log.txt

[DarKOrange75]

So I played with the 'Max Auto-Exposure' parameter and I can't go above 20000 (the script adds 30s so it is a 50s time out for rpicam-still).Above 50s rpicam-still times out.

[EricClaeys]

I copied the following command from the log file and increased the timeout value to 150

Did you change the "timeout 90" or "--timeout 1" to 150?
Either way, are you saying the original command timed out but with 150 it doesn't timeout?
Try removing the leading "timeout xxx" and run manually and see if it hangs.

Also, please lower your Debug Level to 3.
4 is only needed when debugging overlay problems.

[DarKOrange75]

I changed timeout 90 to timeout 150

[EricClaeys]

OK, thanks.
Someone on Facebook is getting timeouts only when timelapse are being created so it looks like a 30 second buffer may not be long enough.

Can you do the following and let me know if the timeouts go away?

sudo systemctl stop allsky
cd ~/allsky/src
## edit capture_RPi.cpp: on line 93 change the 30 to 300
make
cp capture_RPi  ../bin
> /var/log/allsky.log
sudo systemctl start allsky 

[DarKOrange75]

Thank you Eric,

I've followed your instructions and modified capture_RPi.cpp

It is running now for one hour without any issue.

Here is the log file.

[
support-none-20250710233958.zip
]

[EricClaeys]

Great, thanks @DarKOrange75 . Please give me a staus update in a couple days. Hopefully this super easy change fixes the problem.

[DarKOrange75]

Ok thanks Eric.

[tonyG-astro]

That someone on Facebook would be me. :-)
I've now edited that file so will know whether this fixes my problem or not by tomorrow morning. (I also raised a discussion about it, #4726)