Multiple cameras on one Pi/Server

[Blumenkroete]

Hi!

Is it possible to connect multiple cameras to a Pi using INDI?

I would like to use an ASI 533MC and an ASI676MC on a Pi, but I'm
having some trouble with my small test setup.

The cameras are recognized, but I can only get images from one camera.
Perhaps someone could give me a tip on how to make this work.

Thank you very much.

[aaronwmorris]

The capture process can only capture from a single camera at a time, it cannot capture from two cameras concurrently.

If you have multiple cameras connected and you want to explicitly reference one camera, you have to use the INDI Camera Name field at the top of the Camera tab. The name has to exactly match the camera name in indi.

I have merged a new script in #2523 and #2524 with the purpose of showing the exact camera names that need to be used for this field.

[Blumenkroete]

Thanks for the quick reply!
So there are no plans to support this?

Basically, everything would be there, wouldn't it?

[aaronwmorris]

In theory, I could refactor a few things to support multiple cameras with the same capture program. The database and web application effectively already support multiple cameras.

The challenge comes down to managing settings for different cameras. The image processing supports a single set of settings. Red, green, blue, hue, saturation, scaling, rotation, stretching, stacking... there are only settings for one camera.

I would rather support one camera well and not introduce unnecessary complexity which could make things more fragile.

There are other options available. You could connect both cameras to the same device, like a Raspberry Pi and setup capture processes on two separate VMs, one for each camera and just connect to the cameras over the network.

[hughhalf]

@Blumenkroete I'm curious how you got on with doing this - I'm interested in doing the same thing - a couple of RPi HQ cameras on a Pi5.

It looks like running a single complete "native" instance of indi-allski and then a second one via Docker is the go, but Aaron's comment leads me to wonder if some part of the indi-allsky suite can in fact be shared ?

[Blumenkroete]

Hi!

I haven't had time to deal with it yet because my roof is currently covered in snow and I can't get to my camera.
I don't know yet whether I will use multiple cameras.

[hughhalf]

Ah fair enough - have kinda the opposite problem here with recent temps in the 40C/105F range!

I think I'm going to at least experiment with the multiple camera/single Pi approach, will post an update when I'm a bit further along