So a number of you in the forum know that I set a mission for myself earlier this year. (I think it was in May?) that I would try to get most of the drivers that worked on Linux to work in Mac OS. There were not that many that didn't work, and most of them were CCDs, so it felt like an achievable goal because I had already worked last year on getting Meade DSI, QHY, and Apogee working properly on Macs. So I felt like I could do it. Some of the drivers just required a small change or two, such as just one or two edits of where files are installed on Macs, and some required significant work, such as Fishcamp. For Fishcamp Starfish, I had to rewrite a significant portion of the driver because not only did it not work properly on Macs, it did not work properly on Linux either. A member of the forums was willing to loan me his Fishcamp and I spent 3 days on it and got it working pretty well. At this point, I think my goal is nearly achieved.
Here is a list of what I did:
I added support in Kstars on Mac by porting, enabling, including, modifying, or fixing the Linux drivers for SBIG, MGEN, ATIK, Fishcamp, INDIDuino, SSAG, Radio Sim, RTLSDR, and Point Grey Firefly.
The following are confirmed to be working well on OS X by you the members of the forum: SBIG, MGEN, Fishcamp, INDIDuino, Radio Sim, and RTLSDR.
The following ones need to be tested still on OS X: SSAG and Point Grey Firefly (Possibly ATIK too in order to make sure I included Peter’s driver correctly)
Thank you to Peter for letting us include your ATIK drivers and thank you to those of you in the forum who helped me test these and get these working.
And then I sent emails to Moravian Instruments and INovaCCD to get help from them in porting their Linux drivers to work on OS X. Jakub at Moravian did respond and ported their driver so that is now included too. I don't yet have a response from iNovaCCD. Hopefully soon.
There are only several drivers that are still not supported on OS X. I think they include The Joystick Driver, V4L2, and iNovaCCD. I already explained iNova, and the other two can't be supported because the libraries required to make them work are not available on OS X.
Also, since V4L2 is not supported on OS X, webcams were not supported, so I decided to make an INDI Webcam driver based on FFMPEG that would support any webcam supported by FFMPEG on OS X or Linux. On OS X, that includes any AV Foundation supported Camera including USB 2 and USB 3 webcams, and the integrated MacBook camera. Basically, if the camera can work in Photo Booth on your Mac, it can work in this driver. On Linux, that includes any camera supported by V4L2, libdc1394, and several other systems. And while making the driver, I found that I could also fairly easily add support for IP Cameras and mobile phone cameras such as integrated iPhone cameras and Android Cameras as well. For more details see here:
www.indilib.org/devices/ccds/indi-webcam.html
Please stay tuned, this will all be included in the next upcoming release of KStars for Macs. Here is a screenshot of Ekos running on my Mac showing all the CCDs that will be supported in the next version:
Thanks,
Rob
