[Andrea K]

Hi,

WiFi Commander for PENTAX v 1.6.0 is online.
1- Shots auto download: in the preferences now you can define a folder in your PC where auto download the shots that you take with the app, also the Planned Shots!
2- LV Zoom KP fix: KP, like the K-70, has a bug with the Pentax LV zoom implementation, I made a dedicated version of this function to have a working zoom also with the KP. Sadly this can't be on par with the native camera function but this has a Pentax side bug on K-70 and KP.
3- Advices on how speed up pictures download: there were some findings about how to speed up the pictures download using the WiFi connection with the camera.
4- BugFixes

https://www.wificommanderpentax.com

Enjoy.

Next step the much awaited mac version...

[Paul the Sunman]

Next step the much awaited mac version...

Really!? Wonderful.

[Dale H. Cook]

Andrea -

I tried reaching you through the contact form on your site but the message didn't seem to send.

I installed Wifi Commander for Pentax 1.6 64-bit on my 64-bit Win7 laptop a couple of weeks ago and it worked fine with my K-70. I recently wanted to give it a good workout but it is now only semi-functional. It can refresh the camera parameters and autofocus, and I can change parameters such as the ISO, but Live View will not display and I cannot activate the shutter. I have tried all the usual suspects - repairing the installation, uninstalling and re-installing, shutting down my security suite and trying everything again, and many others. Nothing has helped - do you have any suggestions?

[Andrea K]

Hi Dale,

I will check my site contact form. About your problem please check the prerequisites. Perhaps your camera isn't set on single shot mode?

[Dale H. Cook]

Perhaps your camera isn't set on single shot mode?

Andrea -

You nailed it. I had been shooting in timer mode and the K-70 was still in that mode when I tried the program the second time. After I put it back into single shot the program again works properly.

In the video tutorial I saw a red focusing square, but it took me another viewing of the tutorial to figure out that I needed to be in M mode to take full advantage of the program. Now I just have to wait for my next Social Security payment to send you a donation. It is well earned - I have begun a series of photographs of projects on my electronics workbench. I built a mount to suspend the K-70 from the ceiling in the shop, pointed down at the bench. In that position it is difficult to operate, but WiFi Commander for Pentax makes it much easier to take those photos.

[Craigbob]

I finally had a chance to use WiFi Commander this weekend as part of my astroimaging workflow. I ran into a few issues, and I've got a few thoughts about it in general from a Usability standpoint.

First and foremost: Thank you for putting this software out. It's much needed for our wonderful cameras.

I'll discuss the issues/problems I ran across, and it is probably my error causing it, in which case I need to understand what I'm doing wrong.

1: I encountered quite a few crashes where the program would just close on it's own. I was trying to set up planned shots or trying to execute planned shots when it would happen.

2: When scrolling through my list of planned shots I'd get frequent error messages that allowed me to continue. I did not capture the error message, but I'll try next time to do so. FWIW I was using my Wireless Logitech mouse and scroll wheel to scroll.

3: The biggest issue I ran across was when executing my planned shots (and I'd have anywhere from 15-20 120s shots in the list) the program would fire off anywhere from 1 - 3 shots, then nothing. The camera wouldn't activate the shutter though the program thought each shot was successful. I'd see the count down message and the apparent next shot being taken, but nothing on the camera. I had the camera set to Bulb Mode no timer on it so the program controlled everything. Manual focus, review of image turned off. This made it very frustrating.

That's all the issues/bugs I came across.

I realize this next section is somewhat subjective, but I found the interface of creating planned shots a bit annoying, but it may be my errors as well. I wanted to create a sequence of 20 2 minute exposures with a 2 second delay in between each shot. What I had to do was create the shot parameters in the camera/shot tab, then save it to a planned shot list, But I couldn't name the shot list 1st. That did not work. No big deal. So I create the exposure information and I have to add it n number of times to the planned shot list. Then I had to go into the planned shot list and edit each one to add the delay into it. Each time I would add a delay into the exposure, it would go back to the top of list, then I'd have to scroll through the list to find the last image I added a delay to and edit the next one. Over and Over and over.... It'd be much easier if the program remembers the last known row it was on and would jump to next one.

It would be nice if there was a way to specify a default delay that all the planned shots could read (and possibly override on a shot by shot basis).

I'd love to see a column in the shots list where you specify how many shots you want at a particular setting and the program reads that value and loops through that many times.


That's about it. Keep up the good work and I hope this makes sense.

[jbinpg]

If it takes longer than 2 seconds to write your image to the card, you are going to run into problems with timing. Increase your interval to see if it improves.

[Andrea K]

I finally had a chance to use WiFi Commander this weekend as part of my astroimaging workflow. I ran into a few issues, and I've got a few thoughts about it in general from a Usability standpoint.

First and foremost: Thank you for putting this software out. It's much needed for our wonderful cameras.

I'll discuss the issues/problems I ran across, and it is probably my error causing it, in which case I need to understand what I'm doing wrong.

1: I encountered quite a few crashes where the program would just close on it's own. I was trying to set up planned shots or trying to execute planned shots when it would happen.

2: When scrolling through my list of planned shots I'd get frequent error messages that allowed me to continue. I did not capture the error message, but I'll try next time to do so. FWIW I was using my Wireless Logitech mouse and scroll wheel to scroll.

3: The biggest issue I ran across was when executing my planned shots (and I'd have anywhere from 15-20 120s shots in the list) the program would fire off anywhere from 1 - 3 shots, then nothing. The camera wouldn't activate the shutter though the program thought each shot was successful. I'd see the count down message and the apparent next shot being taken, but nothing on the camera. I had the camera set to Bulb Mode no timer on it so the program controlled everything. Manual focus, review of image turned off. This made it very frustrating.

That's all the issues/bugs I came across.

I realize this next section is somewhat subjective, but I found the interface of creating planned shots a bit annoying, but it may be my errors as well. I wanted to create a sequence of 20 2 minute exposures with a 2 second delay in between each shot. What I had to do was create the shot parameters in the camera/shot tab, then save it to a planned shot list, But I couldn't name the shot list 1st. That did not work. No big deal. So I create the exposure information and I have to add it n number of times to the planned shot list. Then I had to go into the planned shot list and edit each one to add the delay into it. Each time I would add a delay into the exposure, it would go back to the top of list, then I'd have to scroll through the list to find the last image I added a delay to and edit the next one. Over and Over and over.... It'd be much easier if the program remembers the last known row it was on and would jump to next one.

It would be nice if there was a way to specify a default delay that all the planned shots could read (and possibly override on a shot by shot basis).

I'd love to see a column in the shots list where you specify how many shots you want at a particular setting and the program reads that value and loops through that many times.


That's about it. Keep up the good work and I hope this makes sense.

Hi Craigbob,

thank you! I need this kind of user's reports.

About 1 and 2: I need some screenshots with the errors and the Log that you can download through the app in the Options section.

About 3: I need the Program that you are using. You can export it from the app and send to me?

About your advices: I will try to solve the grid problem and to implement the delay preferences and the multiplication of settings.


Best Regards,

Andrea

[Craigbob]

If it takes longer than 2 seconds to write your image to the card, you are going to run into problems with timing. Increase your interval to see if it improves.

I'll give that a try next time.

[Class A]

I just tried V 1.6 and the autodownload feature is fantastic.

I was shocked how quick the transfer of a JPEG file was. I set the camera to record DNG files on one card and small JPEGs on the other card. Wifi Commander automatically downloaded the JPEGs to a folder on the laptop and was really quick doing so. I haven't tried this yet, but downloading the files into a "watched folder" (a concept known to both LR and C1), should give one a really good means of getting immediate feedback about images taken.

The autodownloading only works when taking the photo using the Wifi Commander shutter release button. One cannot take a photo with the camera (K-1 in my case) and expect the image to be transferred automatically. That would be the icing on the cake, but this may require polling that would be too inefficient.

I'm rather positively surprised but overall the software did not work well on my laptop (1920x1080 screen) at all. Admittedly, I'm using a custom scaling of 147% which probably confuses the software. The problem is that the LiveView window is extremely small. Some tool bars / panes are partially hidden and when I increase the respective areas (e.g., of the top bar with the LV button, etc.) the LV image gets even smaller. There is a humongous amount of space available yet the LiveView display and the box showing images available for download are very small. There are scroll bars when there really wouldn't have to be any (at least not horizontal ones).

In short, the layout of widgets / display areas is a big mess and severely hurts usability.

Andrea, are you interested in seeing screenshots or are you not interested in fixing these issues that may only occur when Windows custom scaling is used? I haven't tried to set the scaling to 100% yet as I don't want to mess with my other software which is more critical.

BTW, when the LiveView window becomes too small, Wifi Commander takes the camera repeatedly in and out of Live View. At least that's what I think is happening. The camera repeatedly flips the mirror and releases the shutter. It won't stop unless I deactivate Live View with Wifi Commander. It took me a while to figure out that this erratic behaviour is tied to whether or not the Live View window is big enough and/or visible on the Wifi Commander canvas.

I also encountered situations in which the Live View was replaced by a rectangle with a red cross through it, plus some error conditions. Just an FYI.

Initially I thought given the drastic layout problems and the very small Live View image, the software would not be useful for me. However, the very usable download speeds when using JPEG files combined with the autodownload feature may make Wifi Commander very usable as a tool for a quick validation of images when one is not able to review images on the back of the camera.

[wizofoz]

Hi Andrea, I have tried on several occasions to get your app to connect to my k-1, without success. I keep getting the message that there is no connection between laptop and camera, when clearly there is. (I can see the connection in the wifi list. )

Can you make any suggestions?

Also I have had a k-5 converted to Infra Red, is there any chance of getting this app to connect to the k-5 via something like a flu card? It would be very handy when shooting IR.

thanks in advance

[Andrea K]

To Class A, you are right. At this moment the app has huge problems with "not standard" scaling settings and I'm at work also on this.

To wizofoz, if you use another wifi connection try to disable the "autoconnection" feature and after connect to the Pentax camera wifi. Sadly there is support only to wifi enabled cameras.

[wings]

Thanks for the information. I am going to try it out.

[Class A]

At this moment the app has huge problems with "not standard" scaling settings and I'm at work also on this.

I hope you'll succeed and will make a respective notification post here.

[Weevil]

Hi Andrea K,

First... thank you for this app... it's aewsome!

I was able to connect via the K-1 Wifi and download the content of a corrupt SD card onto my Windows 10 laptop...

Actually, the need was : My daughter had taken photos with her K-5 ecently, and suddently, the SD card she was using couldn't be read by any computer, but images were visible on the K-5.

I tried that corrupted SD Card on my K-1 (with the "read-only" switch on to prevent any new data to be written) and photos were still visible/accessible...

So, I had in idea to use the K-1 wifi connexion on my laptop to download those images, not being sure if what I saw on the K-1 display screen were only "jpeg previews" stored in the actual RAW Files, or the good copies of those files (DNG format)...

Anyways, I was a bit shocked when I discovered that Ricoh/Pentax did not had any Windows OS apps... so after searching a bit on PF about Wifi connexions, I was pleased to find your app...

At the end, connextion and downloads saved saved my daughter's life** (sort of... )

Anyways, thanks for that!

I encountered quite a few crashes where the program would just close on it's own.

About 1 and 2: I need some screenshots with the errors and the Log that you can download through the app in the Options section.

However, one of the goals of this reply is also to report the same issue as for @Craigbob

Symptoms: everytime I am willing to close your app, it would hang, and UI stays there... It never terminate. I am getting those "Wifi Commander for Pentax is not responding" error messages.
The "Close the program" or "Wait for the program to respond" options wouldn't work.

I have to reboot my entire computer to clear the app... it wouldn't close otherwise (even if I use the Windows 10 Task Manager to kill the process).

I search a bit on your web page where I should send the debugging info, but couln't figure out...

Some infos:
Windows 10, Build 18362.476
Dell Precision 7520 wit i7-7920HQ CPU , 32Gb RAM, plenty of HD space on SSD 2TB...
(let me know what other info would be required)

so if you have an email, please provide in PM, and I'll forward screenshots and/or logs... (or advise otherwise if I missed what to do in those cases...)

**My daughter will for sure make a donation for this...