pyobs for ZWO ASI cameras

This is a pyobs module for ZWO ASI cameras.

ASI SDK

Download the ASI SDK from https://astronomy-imaging-camera.com/software-drivers and install the libraries from the appropriate folder in lib/ to /usr/local/lib. Then copy asi.rules to /etc/udev/rules.d/99-asi.rules.

Install pyobs-asi

Clone the repository:

git clone https://github.com/pyobs/pyobs-asi.git
cd pyobs-asi

Install it with uv:

uv sync

Alternatively, with plain venv/pip:

python3 -m venv .venv
source .venv/bin/activate
pip install .

Configuration

The AsiCamera class is derived from BaseCamera (see pyobs documentation) and adds some new parameters:

camera:
    Name of camera to acquire driver for.
sdk:
    Path to .so file from ASI SDK.

Therefore, a basic module configuration would look like this:

class: pyobs_asi.AsiCamera
name: ASI camera
camera: ZWO ASI071MC Pro

For cameras with cooling, use AsiCoolCamera instead, which adds a setpoint parameter for the initial cooling setpoint in degrees Celsius:

class: pyobs_asi.AsiCoolCamera
name: ASI camera
camera: ZWO ASI071MC Pro
setpoint: -20

GUI

For testing a camera without a full pyobs setup, install the optional gui extra:

uv sync --extra gui

and run:

uv run asi-gui [path/to/libASICamera2.so]

Dependencies

• pyobs-core for the core functionality.
• zwoasi as a Python wrapper for the ASI SDK.
• Astropy for FITS file handling.
• NumPy for array handling.