qhyccd-alpaca

ASCOM Alpaca driver for QHYCCD cameras and filter wheels written in Rust.

Current state

Tested Operating Systems

• Debian 12 (Bookworm) amd64
• Ubunutu 22.04.3 LTS arm64 (Raspberry Pi 4)

Tested Cameras

Camera Model	ASCOM Validation Status
QHY5III290C	Passed
QHY5III178M	Failed - exposure fails with error code 0x2001
QHY178M	Passed
QHY600M	Passed

Tested Filter Wheels

Filter Wheel Model	ASCOM Validation Status
QHYCFW3L-SR	Passed

Tested Software

• SharpCap
• ACP
• NINA
• SGP

Installation

Prerequisites

The driver relies on the QHYCCD SDK version 23.09.06 and libusb-1.0.0. The instructions below are for installing from source.

Debian / Ubuntu / Raspberry Pi OS

Install libusb-1.0.0 and build tools

sudo apt-get install -y make cmake build-essential libusb-1.0-0-dev

Install QHYCCD SDK

wget https://www.qhyccd.com/file/repository/publish/SDK/230906/sdk_Arm64_23.09.06.tgz
tar xzvf sdk_Arm64_23.09.06.tgz 
cd sdk_Arm64_23.09.06/
sudo sh install.sh

Clone the repository

git clone https://github.com/ivonnyssen/qhyccd-alpaca.git
cd qhyccd-alpaca
cargo build --release

Run the driver

cd target/release
./qhyccd-alpaca [--help for more info]

Rust version requirements

qhyccd-alpaca works with stable Rust. The minimum required Rust version is 1.75.0.

Missing features

• LiveMode is not implemented
• The driver only supports cameras that can transfer 16bit images (almost all cameras can though)
• FastReadout is implemented using the Control::Speed property in the driver, however this control is not available on any of my cameras, so it is untested.
• Pulse guiding is not implemented
• If you find anything else missing or wrong, please open an issue.

License

This project is licensed under either of

• Apache License, Version 2.0, (LICENSE-APACHE or https://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0)
• MIT license (LICENSE-MIT or https://opensource.org/licenses/MIT)

at your option.

Contribution

All contributions are welcome.

Unless you explicitly state otherwise, any contribution intentionally submitted for inclusion in qhyccd-alpaca by you, as defined in the Apache-2.0 license, shall be dual licensed as above, without any additional terms or conditions.