Disable RICOH THETA power off with API and offDelay

Tutorial to use RICOH THETA S API v2.1 to set offDelay. This will prevent the camera from turning off automatically.

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Hi is it the same funktion as to turn off Sleep Mode
in the Settings ?

Nice find. Thanks for sharing that. There is a setting for sleepDelay and for offDelay in the API. I thought that they were different, but I am not sure.

This is what it says for offDelay

Standby time (sec.) until the power automatically turns OFF.

This is what it says for sleepDelay

Standby time (sec.) until sleep.

So, is sleep the same as off? What’s the difference? Maybe in sleep, the application can still wake up the camera? I notice that there is a boot time for the camera. Maybe the boot time is faster when it wakes from sleep? Or, it’s possible that sleep and off are the same.

there is information in the online manual here.

Automatically Turning Off the Camera Power When the Camera is Not in Use

If no operations are performed for a further 5 minutes after the camera enters the sleep mode, the power turns off (for example, if 3 minutes are set, the power turns off after 8 minutes).

The documentation is unclear. If I disable sleep, does it mean that the camera never turns off? I should try this.

I think there must be some difference between sleep and off. However, I do not know what it is.

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We can do the same thing over USB cli using libptp and ptpcam,

ptpcam --set-property=0xd802 --val=0

https://developers.theta360.com/en/docs/v2/usb_reference/property/auto_power_off_delay.html

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@orikoon, thanks for the tip. Are you building a cool project that uses the USB API. I’d love to hear about it. Can you start and stop the video ptpcam? I’ve had some problems stopping the video with ptpcam on Raspberry Pi jessie. If you have it working, can you let me know your OS, version of OS, and version of ptpcam you are using.

Appreciate any help you can provide. I tried to get ptpcam working to stop video recording, but I have not been successful.

@orikoon, thanks for the tip. Are you building a cool project that uses the USB API. I’d love to hear about it. Can you start and stop the video ptpcam? I’ve had some problems stopping the video with ptpcam on Raspberry Pi jessie. If you have it working, can you let me know your OS, version of OS, and version of ptpcam you are using.

I’m using Ubuntu 14.10 and libptp2 1.2.0. Actually, my project does not use the video features but I tested the following command and it worked nicely.

First, To set video mode :

ptpcam --set-property=0x5013 --val=0x8002

And start shooting :

ptpcam -R 0x101C

Finally, stop shooting :

ptpcam -R 0x1018,0xFFFFFFFF

I hope this may help you!

Thank you, it does help. You’re the man!

Weird, i am on a new pi zero w, and have ptpcam and gphoto2 running and connecting to the camera. and i can switch modes, but when i try to start shooting, i get errors (and no video gets taken)

image

Found the solution (from craig of course :slight_smile: )
needed

ptpcam -R 0x101c,0,0,1

those final parts were necessary to make it work!

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Thanks for reporting back on this. I had only vaguely remembered that there were additional parameters required and I couldn’t remember the exact specification. I was in the middle of searching for this when you nicely posted back the correct entry.

Note that we were having problems with live streaming due to lack of UVC 1.5 support in the Linux kernel. However, this was under development at the time and the current kernel might support it. People got it to work on Android by adding a driver, but were not able to post the source code as they did it for work (confidentiality of the IP issue).

If you get live streaming working through the RPi, please post a success report. :slight_smile: You’d be the first.