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Community-maintained Sony Camera Plugin for NINA 3.2 or newer, combining the reviewed contributions and fixes since upstream 1.0.0.4 in one download.
Based on @dougforpres's original project, maintained by @shurkanTwo and contributors. Original commit authorship, copyright notices and MPL-2.0 are preserved.
Changes included
- Capture start and cancellation: reject starts while the camera is busy, preserve aborts received during capture start, and keep native cancellation disabled by default. Soft abort stops NINA's wait while the camera finishes the exposure; the next capture can begin once the camera is ready.
- Exposure verification: select and verify the nearest learned shutter step, handle numeric/Bulb transitions and retry mismatches before capture. A persistent mismatch fails instead of silently using the previous exposure.
- Native-call safeguards: serialize camera/lens calls with bounded waits. A timed-out worker or three consecutive qualifying native errors blocks further native access until NINA restarts; unsupported/never-working properties are excluded from the failure count.
- Image-buffer cleanup: release native image and metadata allocations after copying, including error paths.
- ISO selection: expose sorted supported manual ISO values and exclude AUTO/Multi Frame NR choices.
- Camera temperature: report supported Sony temperature metadata from the most recently downloaded ARW in NINA and image metadata. Missing or invalid readings remain unavailable.
- Focuser fixes: report unsupported capabilities without throwing and improve state cleanup/notifications.
- Busy-start errors: use NINA's recognized exposure-failure exception to avoid the duplicate generic-error notification path identified in NINA 3.2, while preserving the original error/cause and capture rejection.
- Simulator and guidance: include the optional Sony camera simulator, integration tests, lens-learning guidance, camera SD-card saving instructions and manual installation/rollback documentation.
Original upstream PR commits are retained. Selected stability/shutter work from PR dougforpres#13 is adapted and credited to @totoantibes. Installed descriptions and package provenance use GitHub handles; original legal notices are preserved.
Download and install
Download SonyCameraPlugin-1.0.0.5.zip and follow the manual installation and rollback instructions. Close NINA, back up the existing plugin folder outside the active plugins directory, install one copy of the DLL and leave native cancellation disabled initially.
Verify the ZIP or standalone DLL against SHA256SUMS.txt. The package includes the original license, installation guide and exact source/build reference.
The separate Sony native-driver installation is required. NINA's plugin manager still uses the upstream release source; this maintained fork is installed and updated manually. Native-driver packages are a separate release in SonyCamera.
Verification and limits
Source/tag: 1a999956497c4dbaed1c5dba2f4276a9ec1cbccc. Windows tests, release build and packaging passed: 123 tests covering capture/simulator/native policies, temperature metadata and full-plugin integration. Downloaded checksums, package provenance and compiled display metadata were independently checked.
Physical camera/USB/MTP, LiveView, lens operation and complete Sky Flat behavior remain outside the automated checks. The full three-popup UI report still needs confirmation; the release corrects the identified duplicate host-handler path. Native access violations and automatic USB reconnection are not claimed fixed. The experimental native device-removal candidate is not included.
See the session review and changelog. Report problems or results in the fork's issue tracker.
Credits: @dougforpres and the original contributors; @totoantibes, @christian-photo, @naixx and @shurkanTwo for the integrated work; @riversn for the popup report and preliminary field feedback.
