Tag Archives: Hardware

Lewmar Wired Windlass Remote

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When I purchased my sailboat one of the items that came up on the survey was that the windlass control was missing it’s button covers. Recently when I was preparing to drop my anchor, the controller would allow the anchor to be lowered, but not to raise it. The buttons had finally failed.

I searched around online to find a replacement. I found several places with the exact model controller for over $150. Looking at the Lewmar site, I was able to find a newer remote, and when I searched for it’s model number was able to find it available for significantly less than the original. It appeared to have a similar plug, and claimed to be universal.

Lewmar Wired Windlass Remote – 66940002
Lewmar Wired Windlass Remote – 66940002

I was pleased to find that the three conductor plug on the new model mates directly with the old socket. That meant that I simply had to plug the new remote into the existing socket on my boat, and store the socket that came with the new remote with the rest of my spare parts.

The new remote is definitely an improvement, being smaller and properly water resistant.

Details from Lewmar:

Product Description

The 2 button wired windlass remote is the latest design of IP rated hand-held remote from Lewmar. The new unit is designed for remote operation of all Lewmar windlasses. The wired remote is constructed with high-strength, glass-reinforced PP combined with a high-density rubber gasket to ensure robust durability and a secure grip whatever the conditions. These units are supplied complete with a connecting cable extendable up to 3 meters, a watertight deck fitting and socket, and a support bracket for stowing.

  • IP67 plug & socket included
  • Wall plate included
  • 3m of cable (pre-fitted with plug)
  • Waterproof to IP67 (EN 60529) handset
  • Over-molded soft touch rubber buttons
  • Can be used on both 12V and 24V systems
  • Flange mount socket and sealing cap included

Garmin vívoactive® 3 and raceQs sailing tactics app

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Garmin vivoactive 3

I purchased a Garmin Vivoactive watch to be able to run the raceQs sailing tactics racing watch app. I’ve actually purchased two of these watches. I purchased the first in early 2020 when I saw it on sale for around $120 on a discount site. I used a little bit with the RaceQs app https://raceqs.com/smart-watch/ before the COVID-19 Pandemic shut down all sailboat racing, and then used the watch more for its built in GPS bike tracking and walk tracking features during the summer. Towards the end of the summer when I was getting back into sailboat racing, I was wearing the watch on my right hand and managed to knock the strap loose while tying fenders to the lifeline. The watch bounced once on the deck before going overboard. It took me a few months before I saw another deal online that convinced me to buy a second watch.

Fitbit Charge 3

I have a long data history with Fitbit, and currently wear a Charge 3. It’s similar to the newer Charge 4, but without the GPS tracking features. I like the smaller profile on my wrist of the fitbit, and have been wearing it or something similar 24 hours a day for the last five years. The larger size of the Garmin makes it harder to convince myself to switch to away from the Fitbit for my general data tracking, when though I’ve learned that when I don’t use the GPS features of the Garmin it has similar battery life to the Fitbit. I like the always on watch face of the Garmin, especially after I picked an analog style watch face.

Garmin Titanium Watch Face

I like using the RaceQs app on the watch while sailing, especially with the more recent editions features of automatically uploading race data to the website. I have some issues, that I mainly believe are because of the touchscreen abilities with the garmin watch. I believe that the app would be much better served on a watch with an array of buttons surrounding the watch face. The pictures of the app on its website appear to show a button centric watch.

The way I use the watch for sailing is that I wait till I’m on the boat, preparing for a start. Then I start the raceQ app on the watch, wait for it to get a GPS fix and go to the timer setting. Then I configure the timer for the appropriate countdown to my start and start the countdown. Then I explicitly press and hold the crown button until I can press the lock icon, locking the touchscreen. I’ve found that if I don’t lock the touchscreen, inadvertent touches will change what’s displayed on the screen, and cause the app to change modes. I do my best not to touch the app until after my race has completed.

Sometimes I notice the app is on a page that asks if I want to exit, with a check (✔) or cross (❌) option. I’ve found that the best option is to not enter anything until after the race has completed.

I wish that the raceq screen displayed GPS time on all screens, including the screen asking if I wanted to exit the app. There are plenty of times that I’ve been hiking on the rail and the skipper wants the exact time recorded for when we’ve crossed the finish line. with the watch locked, there’s no way to get the time on the watch quickly.

The app automatically calculates tacking angles to the mark after one set of windward/leeward marks have been rounded, which seems nice, but in my position on the boat, isn’t as important to me as the start timer, or the real time of finish.

I don’t know if there’s a way of creating screen shots of the watch display similar to what’s on a phone. It would be nice for describing after the fact what was going on, but with the limited storage and buttons on the phone, don’t expect there’s a way of doing so.

B&G Zeus™ 3S 9 Memory Card Update

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In my previous post I was not able to use the 32GB memory card, while the 16GB memory card worked.

Lexar 32GB Flash Card Properties

I’m happy to report that after explicitly formatting the card as FAT32, my chartplotter was able to read and write the card correctly.

I don’t know the underlying platform the chartplotter is built on, but with flash card sizes regularly increasing, I’d hope that B&G introduce support for the exFAT filesystem in the future. https://fossbytes.com/linux-5-7-microsofts-exfat-driver-code/ has a nice description of the inclusion of exFAT in Linux.

B&G Zeus™ 3S 9 Vessel Message Alarm

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Vessel message from: 541064663

This is a feature that I’m still trying to understand. I believe it is an AIS message, and possibly a distress message, but have not been able to figure out what it means. I get the same result whether I push Show or Close, in that the alarm dialog closes and no cursor is selected.

Garmin AIS 300

I have a GARMIN AIS™ 300 Blackbox Receiver connected to my NMEA 2k network, and assume that it generated the message on the local network and the B&G is just displaying it. Because I don’t have an AIS transmitter, I don’t believe it’s a directed message to me. I’m not broadcasting any ID, and my radio isn’t hooked to the GPS, so isn’t configured to be able to broadcast distress signals. (One more item in my to-do-list)

The only annoyance I have with this type of message has been when I left the instruments running while i was away from the boat and returned to find the alarm beeping and a similar message displayed. I don’t like that the beeping may have been annoying my neighbors for days.

B&G Zeus™ 3S 9 Tracks Truncated

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I’ve been extremely happy with my new chartplotter when I’m actively using it. I’ve been frustrated by some of the features.

I wish it would automatically start recording a new track every time it was turned on. It seems that this should be an option in the settings, but I’ve not been able to find such an option.

The bigger issue is that it seems to reduce the size of stored tracks. This may be related to whatever it’s doing to synchronize with the online map, but the behavior is extremely annoying as it means I don’t have the true logged data of where I visited on my two week trip to the San Juan Islands over July 4th.

Tracks on return from trip

The image above shows the track that had been running from my leaving of Odlin County Park on Lopez Island on July 5th, going north to Orcas Island, then sailing south to Mackaye Bay on Lopez Island on July 6th, and finally motoring south to Shilshole on July 7th, arriving a little past 3pm.

Tracks after the boat has not moved for two weeks.

The second image was taken on July 22nd. You can see that the number of points for the Leave ODLIN track has reduced from 16063 to 178. Even stranger is that the Spencer Spit log has increased from 124 points to 134, and Deer Harbor has increased from 56 to 61.

Synchronize Settings

I had the plotter set to automatically synchronize settings with the mobile app and the web site, but have disabled it as of today to see if future logs will not be truncated. The auto synchronization was a very nice thing initially because I was able to create a series of places at my desktop using the full keyboard and mouse, and then the next time I turned on my chart plotter they appeared on the plotter with my intervention.

Waypoints

I realized that the waypoints I’d created all had the default icon. I went in and changed the icon on the chart plotter for each if the locations and something also truncated the names. I don’t know if it was the synchronization with the online service, or the chartplotter itself, but losing data is never a good thing.

Another feature that would be extremely nice would be if the time at the top of the screen included the date and UTC offset or timezone.

B&G Zeus 3s Memory Cards

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I recently installed a Zeus™ 3S 9 chartplotter on my sailboat, and am generally happy with it. I’ve been running into a few problems and am still trying to figure out what’s going on. This is probably only the first post that I’ll write about issues I’m having.

The manual says it can read memory cards larger than 32GB if they are formatted NTFS. I found the smallest flash card in my regular collection of cards was a 32GB card. I put it into the chart plotter because I wanted to copy the screen captures to my computer, but it was not recognized.

Today I found a 16GB card that had been used in a raspberry pi project and reformatted it in windows 10, then took both it and the larger card to the boat.

I did a couple of tests and the 16GB card was readable from either slot, while the 32GB card doesn’t show up.

You can see that I put the 32 GB card in the top slot and the 16 GB card in the bottom.

Micro SD Cards Fully Inserted

The second picture shows the memory cards fully inserted. At that point I was able to see the 16GB card in the chartplotter, but the 32GB card does not appear.

Chart Plotter Screenshot

After I returned home I looked at the filesystem properties on each of the cards.

The larger of the two cards had defaulted to the exFAT format, while the smaller was FAT32. I was able to reformat the larger drive as FAT32 and may test if it can be read by the chartplotter in the future. I don’t like buying small memory cards. I have found the fast (Ultra High Speed Class 3 = 30 MBit/second) 128GB cards are the right ones to buy for my drone and camera usage.

As I read through this post you can see that the 16GB card is listed as UHS-3 while the 32GB card is UHS-1. I don’t think that should make a difference in this usage.

Canon CanoScan LiDE 400

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I’ve had a Canon CanoScan LiDE 210 for at least 7 years. One of the deciding factors when I bought it was that it used a single USB cable, with no need for a second power cable.

The 210 used a mini-usb cable, which was sometimes difficult to make sure it was inserted in the correct direction. I occasionally had problems with the software driving losing communication during a scan. I switched lengths of cable at various times, with shorter cables seeming to be more consistent, but never truly conclusive.

Recently the scanner stopped moving the scan bar back to the starting location before each scan. First it would leave the scan bar at the finish location, and move to the beginning position when I would start the next scan, but then that functionality stopped and it would only return to the start position when it was first plugged into the USB port. If I tried to scan a second page without unplugging the USB cable, the movement motor would make a nasty grinding sound as it tried to move the scanner further down the page, and would result in a messy black page in the scan results. It was especially frustrating if I was trying to create a multi page PDF.

I read several online reviews, and decided to get another Canon scanner. The reviews recommended saving $20 and getting the less expensive scanner, but from my reading, only the more expensive scanner used the USB C plug, which has the advantage that it can be plugged in either direction.

I found it fascinating how similar the new packaging is to the old packaging. The old box was designed with a carrying handle, while the new box is not. I expect that’s largely due to the predominance of mail order over retail purchase. The dimensions of the new scanner and the box are pretty much the same. The boxes can be stacked 13 high. The temperature range on the old one could go 5° to 35°C while the new one goes from 0° to 40°C. Each scanner lists a maximum 4800 dpi. The 210 reported 10 seconds per page. The 400 reports 8 seconds per page.

The new software is slightly nicer working with the most recent version of windows 10, but still nothing to be too excited about. My biggest issue is that the settings for the Auto button on the scanner will not allow me to specify it will always save a JPG file. I could do that with the old scanner software. Now, to make sure I always get the format I want I much launch the software and initiate the scanning from the PC.

New B&G Zeus™ 3S 9

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This week I replaced my old Garmin GPSMAP® 740 with a brand new B&G Zeus™ 3S 9 chartplotter with C-MAP cartography. I’m excited about using this because I’ve used older B&G Zeus products on friends boats and this has everything I’m used to with more processor speed.

I had earlier upgraded to communication in my boat to connect the older Raymarine Seatalk instruments to the NMEA 2000 network using a Raymarine SeaTalk1 to SeaTalkng converter kit (Part Number E22158) with a blue DeviceNet adapter connecting to my NMEA 2000 backbone, and a white DeviceNet adapter connecting to my Garmin GPSMap 740. This allowed my garmin to show a few more details and my raspberry pi to capture and log the data from the depth and wind instruments.

I was hoping that beyond the physical changes to my instrument pod with the installation of the new B&G unit, the wiring changes would just require disconnecting the Garmin from the NMEA2000 connection and connecting the B&G to the same connection.

I did that. Then when I powered on the B&G, it asked for confirmation to discover all connected devices, which I had it do. It wasn’t seeing the results from the raymarine devices on the network, though it was getting AIS targets from the Garmin AIS 300 receiver and seeing my new fusion radio, both on the NMEA2000 bus. The communication path to either of those units was via the Seatalk converter, so I was confused as to if the B&G couldn’t see the old instruments, and spent a couple of days looking for possible solutions.

Most of the solutions I seemed to run across made me think that there may be too much power loss on the length of NMEA2000 backbone cable reaching from inside nav station to my outside pedestal. When I’d originally installed the converter kit, I spliced in power in the pedestal. Power was supplied directly to the converter, and it provided power to the NMEA2k backbone. During my installation of the B&G I attempted to do some wiring cleanup. I removed the power to the converter, and provided power to the NMEA2k bus in the nav station.

Here are several links to discussion that suggest power across the length of the backbone may be my problem:

I took video of the status led blinking on the converter, and it never was reporting low voltage. It was definitely reporting something with data, but I wasn’t sure if it was the first or second from the list.

I wasn’t excited about cutting and splicing my pedestal power connection again to provide power directly to the converter, and while playing around and power cycling everything, I realized that if I power cycled the converter/nmea2k bus, and brought up the B&G and just looked at the instruments, the converter was visible in the B&G!

If I selected it, I could see all the data it was publishing from the instruments on the NMEA2k bus.

That seemed like success! (The Sea Temperature reading has been whacky since I’ve bought the boat, and I can’t seem to figure out how to get it to read the correct temperature on the original ST60+ Tridata either.) So I told the B&G to auto select it’s data sources again.

After doing that, the Seatalk converter no longer was visible in the list of devices, or the data it was publishing. I also figured out that my Raspberry Pi stopped logging the data from the instruments when this happened. (I’m pretty sure my raspberry pi is the device at the top of the device list with — under both Model ID and Serial No. Fixing that is a low priority task for me. If you know how to properly configure the Pi please leave a comment pointing out what I should do. This is the platform I’m running.)

After several tests, I figured out that my Raymarine instruments continue working and putting data on the NMEA2k bus as long as I don’t have the B&G auto discover sources. I manually went through and configured the sources in the B&G settings, and was able to get things configured as I want.

I’m not 100% satisfied because I don’t think I should be able to take the converter offline with whatever commands the B&G is sending over the NMEA2k bus, but I’m happy that I didn’t have to splice more cables this week.

Raspberry Pi ZeroW Camera Focus with FFMPEG

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I wanted a quick and dirty method to test my camera module installation on my Raspberry Pi ZeroW installation. I don’t have a monitor connected to the Raspberry, and explicitly did not install the desktop version of the operating system. This is especially important because the camera itself may not be properly focused after installation in the case, and the only way to easily focus the camera is with a video stream allowing you to make small adjustments and see them nearly real time.

I’ve used FFMPEG for years as it handles almost any kind of video or audio I can throw at it. I use VLC on my desktop machine for similar reasons.

I did a quick install of ffmpeg on my Pi with the following command, allowing it to install all the requirements, adding up to almost 126 new packages and 56MB that needed to be downloaded and installed.

sudo apt-get install ffmpeg -y

After it finished installing, I was able to run the following command with the 192.168.0.16 address being my desktop computer.

ffmpeg -f video4linux2 -input_format h264 -video_size 1280x720 -framerate 30 -i /dev/video0 -vcodec copy -an -f mpegts udp://192.168.0.16:5000?pkt_size=1316

On my desktop computer I ran VLC, under the Media menu, selected Open Network Stream, and opened:

udp://@0.0.0.0:5000

2019-09-23 (1)2019-09-23 (2)

What I’m doing is to use FFMPEG to pull video from the device and push it using UDP datagrams at my desktop on port 5000. Then VLC opens a port on the local machine at port 5000 to receive the datagrams and it decodes and displays the video. An interesting thing about this method is that I can stop transmitting from the raspberry, then restart it, and VLC will accept the packets since UDP is a connectionless protocol.

What really surprised me was that when I logged in a second time to my Raspberry Pi to view the CPU usage for streaming, it was only running around 12% of the CPU. I was interested in knowing what native formats the camera supported..

ffmpeg -f v4l2 -list_formats all -i /dev/video0
ffmpeg version 4.1.4-1+rpt1~deb10u1 Copyright (c) 2000-2019 the FFmpeg developers
  built with gcc 8 (Raspbian 8.3.0-6+rpi1)
  configuration: --prefix=/usr --extra-version='1+rpt1~deb10u1' --toolchain=hardened --libdir=/usr/lib/arm-linux-gnueabihf --incdir=/usr/include/arm-linux-gnueabihf --arch=arm --enable-gpl --disable-stripping --enable-avresample --disable-filter=resample --enable-avisynth --enable-gnutls --enable-ladspa --enable-libaom --enable-libass --enable-libbluray --enable-libbs2b --enable-libcaca --enable-libcdio --enable-libcodec2 --enable-libflite --enable-libfontconfig --enable-libfreetype --enable-libfribidi --enable-libgme --enable-libgsm --enable-libjack --enable-libmp3lame --enable-libmysofa --enable-libopenjpeg --enable-libopenmpt --enable-libopus --enable-libpulse --enable-librsvg --enable-librubberband --enable-libshine --enable-libsnappy --enable-libsoxr --enable-libspeex --enable-libssh --enable-libtheora --enable-libtwolame --enable-libvidstab --enable-libvorbis --enable-libvpx --enable-libwavpack --enable-libwebp --enable-libx265 --enable-libxml2 --enable-libxvid --enable-libzmq --enable-libzvbi --enable-lv2 --enable-omx --enable-openal --enable-opengl --enable-sdl2 --enable-omx-rpi --enable-mmal --enable-libdc1394 --enable-libdrm --enable-libiec61883 --enable-chromaprint --enable-frei0r --enable-libx264 --enable-shared
  libavutil      56. 22.100 / 56. 22.100
  libavcodec     58. 35.100 / 58. 35.100
  libavformat    58. 20.100 / 58. 20.100
  libavdevice    58.  5.100 / 58.  5.100
  libavfilter     7. 40.101 /  7. 40.101
  libavresample   4.  0.  0 /  4.  0.  0
  libswscale      5.  3.100 /  5.  3.100
  libswresample   3.  3.100 /  3.  3.100
  libpostproc    55.  3.100 / 55.  3.100
[video4linux2,v4l2 @ 0x2367e40] Raw       :     yuv420p :     Planar YUV 4:2:0 : {32-3280, 2}x{32-2464, 2}
[video4linux2,v4l2 @ 0x2367e40] Raw       :     yuyv422 :           YUYV 4:2:2 : {32-3280, 2}x{32-2464, 2}
[video4linux2,v4l2 @ 0x2367e40] Raw       :       rgb24 :     24-bit RGB 8-8-8 : {32-3280, 2}x{32-2464, 2}
[video4linux2,v4l2 @ 0x2367e40] Compressed:       mjpeg :            JFIF JPEG : {32-3280, 2}x{32-2464, 2}
[video4linux2,v4l2 @ 0x2367e40] Compressed:        h264 :                H.264 : {32-3280, 2}x{32-2464, 2}
[video4linux2,v4l2 @ 0x2367e40] Compressed:       mjpeg :          Motion-JPEG : {32-3280, 2}x{32-2464, 2}
[video4linux2,v4l2 @ 0x2367e40] Raw       : Unsupported :           YVYU 4:2:2 : {32-3280, 2}x{32-2464, 2}
[video4linux2,v4l2 @ 0x2367e40] Raw       : Unsupported :           VYUY 4:2:2 : {32-3280, 2}x{32-2464, 2}
[video4linux2,v4l2 @ 0x2367e40] Raw       :     uyvy422 :           UYVY 4:2:2 : {32-3280, 2}x{32-2464, 2}
[video4linux2,v4l2 @ 0x2367e40] Raw       :        nv12 :         Y/CbCr 4:2:0 : {32-3280, 2}x{32-2464, 2}
[video4linux2,v4l2 @ 0x2367e40] Raw       :       bgr24 :     24-bit BGR 8-8-8 : {32-3280, 2}x{32-2464, 2}
[video4linux2,v4l2 @ 0x2367e40] Raw       :     yuv420p :     Planar YVU 4:2:0 : {32-3280, 2}x{32-2464, 2}
[video4linux2,v4l2 @ 0x2367e40] Raw       : Unsupported :         Y/CrCb 4:2:0 : {32-3280, 2}x{32-2464, 2}
[video4linux2,v4l2 @ 0x2367e40] Raw       :        bgr0 : 32-bit BGRA/X 8-8-8-8 : {32-3280, 2}x{32-2464, 2}
/dev/video0: Immediate exit requested

That output leads me to believe that the camera module could output either h264 or mjpeg without significant CPU overhead. What it doesn’t do is tell me efficient frame sizes. It seems to say that horizontal and vertical sizes can be anything between 32 to 3280 and 32 to 2464. I know that the specs on the camera say that it will run still frames at the high resolution, but video is significantly less.

Two Video4Linux commands that return interesting and similar results are:

pi@WimPiZeroCamera:~ $ v4l2-ctl --list-formats-ext
ioctl: VIDIOC_ENUM_FMT
        Type: Video Capture

        [0]: 'YU12' (Planar YUV 4:2:0)
                Size: Stepwise 32x32 - 3280x2464 with step 2/2
        [1]: 'YUYV' (YUYV 4:2:2)
                Size: Stepwise 32x32 - 3280x2464 with step 2/2
        [2]: 'RGB3' (24-bit RGB 8-8-8)
                Size: Stepwise 32x32 - 3280x2464 with step 2/2
        [3]: 'JPEG' (JFIF JPEG, compressed)
                Size: Stepwise 32x32 - 3280x2464 with step 2/2
        [4]: 'H264' (H.264, compressed)
                Size: Stepwise 32x32 - 3280x2464 with step 2/2
        [5]: 'MJPG' (Motion-JPEG, compressed)
                Size: Stepwise 32x32 - 3280x2464 with step 2/2
        [6]: 'YVYU' (YVYU 4:2:2)
                Size: Stepwise 32x32 - 3280x2464 with step 2/2
        [7]: 'VYUY' (VYUY 4:2:2)
                Size: Stepwise 32x32 - 3280x2464 with step 2/2
        [8]: 'UYVY' (UYVY 4:2:2)
                Size: Stepwise 32x32 - 3280x2464 with step 2/2
        [9]: 'NV12' (Y/CbCr 4:2:0)
                Size: Stepwise 32x32 - 3280x2464 with step 2/2
        [10]: 'BGR3' (24-bit BGR 8-8-8)
                Size: Stepwise 32x32 - 3280x2464 with step 2/2
        [11]: 'YV12' (Planar YVU 4:2:0)
                Size: Stepwise 32x32 - 3280x2464 with step 2/2
        [12]: 'NV21' (Y/CrCb 4:2:0)
                Size: Stepwise 32x32 - 3280x2464 with step 2/2
        [13]: 'BGR4' (32-bit BGRA/X 8-8-8-8)
                Size: Stepwise 32x32 - 3280x2464 with step 2/2
pi@WimPiZeroCamera:~ $ v4l2-ctl -L

User Controls

                     brightness 0x00980900 (int)    : min=0 max=100 step=1 default=50 value=50 flags=slider
                       contrast 0x00980901 (int)    : min=-100 max=100 step=1 default=0 value=0 flags=slider
                     saturation 0x00980902 (int)    : min=-100 max=100 step=1 default=0 value=0 flags=slider
                    red_balance 0x0098090e (int)    : min=1 max=7999 step=1 default=1000 value=1000 flags=slider
                   blue_balance 0x0098090f (int)    : min=1 max=7999 step=1 default=1000 value=1000 flags=slider
                horizontal_flip 0x00980914 (bool)   : default=0 value=0
                  vertical_flip 0x00980915 (bool)   : default=0 value=0
           power_line_frequency 0x00980918 (menu)   : min=0 max=3 default=1 value=1
                                0: Disabled
                                1: 50 Hz
                                2: 60 Hz
                                3: Auto
                      sharpness 0x0098091b (int)    : min=-100 max=100 step=1 default=0 value=0 flags=slider
                  color_effects 0x0098091f (menu)   : min=0 max=15 default=0 value=0
                                0: None
                                1: Black & White
                                2: Sepia
                                3: Negative
                                4: Emboss
                                5: Sketch
                                6: Sky Blue
                                7: Grass Green
                                8: Skin Whiten
                                9: Vivid
                                10: Aqua
                                11: Art Freeze
                                12: Silhouette
                                13: Solarization
                                14: Antique
                                15: Set Cb/Cr
                         rotate 0x00980922 (int)    : min=0 max=360 step=90 default=0 value=0 flags=modify-layout
             color_effects_cbcr 0x0098092a (int)    : min=0 max=65535 step=1 default=32896 value=32896

Codec Controls

             video_bitrate_mode 0x009909ce (menu)   : min=0 max=1 default=0 value=0 flags=update
                                0: Variable Bitrate
                                1: Constant Bitrate
                  video_bitrate 0x009909cf (int)    : min=25000 max=25000000 step=25000 default=10000000 value=10000000
         repeat_sequence_header 0x009909e2 (bool)   : default=0 value=0
            h264_i_frame_period 0x00990a66 (int)    : min=0 max=2147483647 step=1 default=60 value=60
                     h264_level 0x00990a67 (menu)   : min=0 max=11 default=11 value=11
                                0: 1
                                1: 1b
                                2: 1.1
                                3: 1.2
                                4: 1.3
                                5: 2
                                6: 2.1
                                7: 2.2
                                8: 3
                                9: 3.1
                                10: 3.2
                                11: 4
                   h264_profile 0x00990a6b (menu)   : min=0 max=4 default=4 value=4
                                0: Baseline
                                1: Constrained Baseline
                                2: Main
                                4: High

Camera Controls

                  auto_exposure 0x009a0901 (menu)   : min=0 max=3 default=0 value=0
                                0: Auto Mode
                                1: Manual Mode
         exposure_time_absolute 0x009a0902 (int)    : min=1 max=10000 step=1 default=1000 value=1000
     exposure_dynamic_framerate 0x009a0903 (bool)   : default=0 value=0
             auto_exposure_bias 0x009a0913 (intmenu): min=0 max=24 default=12 value=12
                                0: -4000 (0xfffffffffffff060)
                                1: -3667 (0xfffffffffffff1ad)
                                2: -3333 (0xfffffffffffff2fb)
                                3: -3000 (0xfffffffffffff448)
                                4: -2667 (0xfffffffffffff595)
                                5: -2333 (0xfffffffffffff6e3)
                                6: -2000 (0xfffffffffffff830)
                                7: -1667 (0xfffffffffffff97d)
                                8: -1333 (0xfffffffffffffacb)
                                9: -1000 (0xfffffffffffffc18)
                                10: -667 (0xfffffffffffffd65)
                                11: -333 (0xfffffffffffffeb3)
                                12: 0 (0x0)
                                13: 333 (0x14d)
                                14: 667 (0x29b)
                                15: 1000 (0x3e8)
                                16: 1333 (0x535)
                                17: 1667 (0x683)
                                18: 2000 (0x7d0)
                                19: 2333 (0x91d)
                                20: 2667 (0xa6b)
                                21: 3000 (0xbb8)
                                22: 3333 (0xd05)
                                23: 3667 (0xe53)
                                24: 4000 (0xfa0)
      white_balance_auto_preset 0x009a0914 (menu)   : min=0 max=9 default=1 value=1
                                0: Manual
                                1: Auto
                                2: Incandescent
                                3: Fluorescent
                                4: Fluorescent H
                                5: Horizon
                                6: Daylight
                                7: Flash
                                8: Cloudy
                                9: Shade
            image_stabilization 0x009a0916 (bool)   : default=0 value=0
                iso_sensitivity 0x009a0917 (intmenu): min=0 max=4 default=0 value=0
                                0: 0 (0x0)
                                1: 100000 (0x186a0)
                                2: 200000 (0x30d40)
                                3: 400000 (0x61a80)
                                4: 800000 (0xc3500)
           iso_sensitivity_auto 0x009a0918 (menu)   : min=0 max=1 default=1 value=1
                                0: Manual
                                1: Auto
         exposure_metering_mode 0x009a0919 (menu)   : min=0 max=2 default=0 value=0
                                0: Average
                                1: Center Weighted
                                2: Spot
                     scene_mode 0x009a091a (menu)   : min=0 max=13 default=0 value=0
                                0: None
                                8: Night
                                11: Sports

JPEG Compression Controls

            compression_quality 0x009d0903 (int)    : min=1 max=100 step=1 default=30 value=30

 

 

Raspberry PiZeroW Camera Module

by

20190913_140539

When you’ve gotten used to Amazon Prime and free shipping, purchasing inexpensive items from other online retailers where the shipping doubles the cost of the item makes it harder to impulse buy items. An item for $5 that costs $7 in shipping often doesn’t get bought. Even a pair of items that cost $16 together that then cost $7 in shipping cause me to delay the purchase.

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Because I was purchasing a Raspberry Pi 4 and Raspberry Pi USB-C Power Supply from Sparkfun, I decided to throw in another Pi ZeroW and case for another $16. I then added the Raspberry Pi Camera module because the case has an optional cover enclosing the camera and I wanted to see how it all worked together. I only wish I’d realized that there was a Noir version, because I’ve always wanted to play with infrared photography.

Having recently streamlined the installation of a Pi Zero, I installed the camera and Pi ZeroW in the case, put the configured micro sd card in place, plugged it into my HDMI monitor just to watch it boot and applied power. I never saw anything on the monitor. The Pi ZeroW only has a single LED, which is generally on, but blinks for micro sd activity. Because I’d closed the case, the LED wasn’t visible, and with no monitor activity I was wondering if I’d gotten a bad board.

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I opened the case and powered it on again, this time I knew I was seeing LED activity. I did a quick search of my network for new devices and found the new board was responding on ssh and appeared to be working correctly other than no HDMI output.  I was even able to take a snapshot with the camera using the command:

raspistill -o image.jpg

I decided to test booting the device without the camera installed. That worked fine, and I had HDMI output during the boot process. Now I started to wonder if perhaps the power supply I was using didn’t provide enough power. Perhaps the camera and the HDMI device were mutually exclusive in the amount of power required

A lot of searching on the web resulted in nothing about the power required for the camera affecting the HDMI output. I found that I might be able to reduce the power requirements by 25mA by turning off the HDMI, but that the Pi ZeroW was already the lowest power draw available. https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blogs/jeff-geerling/raspberry-pi-zero-conserve-energy

I found the tvservice command and the -s option with the camera installed was resulting in a different result from without the camera installed. 

pi@WimPiZeroCamera:~ $ sudo /usr/bin/tvservice -s
state 0x40000 [NTSC 4:3], 720x480 @ 60.00Hz, interlaced
pi@WimPiZeroW:~ $ sudo /usr/bin/tvservice -s
state 0xa [HDMI CEA (16) RGB lim 16:9], 1920x1080 @ 60.00Hz, progressive

At least recognizing that difference was progress. For some reason under Raspian Buster the camera module is causing the HDMI output to be different. I found options in https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/configuration/config-txt/video.md that allow me to force the HDMI output to what I want. I changed /boot/config.txt with the following and now I’ve got both camera and video working properly.

# uncomment to force a specific HDMI mode (this will force [HDMI CEA (16) RGB lim 16:9], 1920x1080 @ 60.00Hz, progressive)
hdmi_group=1
hdmi_mode=16

I hope that this helps someone else having problems with both camera and hdmi video output. I don’t know if this was specific to Buster since I never tried it under Jessie or Stretch.