#454 Add support for Panasonic cameras remotely controllable by Panasonic ImageApp
Most recent Panasonic digital cameras can be remotely accessed and controlled from your smartphone over wifi using the so called Panasonic ImageApp. It supports (to my knowledge) the following Panasonic cameras:
HC-X1000
HC-W850M / W850 / W858
HC-V750M / V750 / V757
HC-V550 / V550M / V250
HC-X920 / X920M / X929
HC-V520 / V520M
HC-V720 / V720M / V727 / V727M
HX-A500 / A100
HX-WA30
DMC-LX100
DMC-FZ1000
DMC-TZ55 / TZ56 / ZS35
DMC-TZ60 / TZ61 / ZS40 / SZ8
DMC-LF1 / TZ40 / TZ41 / TZ37
DMC-ZS30 / ZS27
DMC-FT5 / TS5 / SZ9
DMC-GH4 / GM1 / GM1S / GM5 / GX7 / G6 / GF6
(List copied from http://av.jpn.support.panasonic.com/support/global/cs/soft/image_app/index.html ... seems like GH3 is also supported and maybe even more)
I discovered, that the communication protocol has been partially reverse engineered:
http://www.personal-view.com/talks/discussion/6703/control-your-gh3-from-a-web-browser-now-with-video-/p1
and there is also a working prototype web app as well as a Java application supporting live view, remote shutter release etc.:
https://code.google.com/p/iunxtio/
The protocol as well as the Java code doesn't lock too complicated to me, so maybe there is a chance to implement some of the features in (lib?)gphoto2? I am happy to assist where I can, since I am owning a Panasonic GX7 and GM1. Hence, there is kind of a personal interest here.
I tried to understand a little bit of (lib)gphoto2's internals and to my untrained eye it looks like it could be implemented similar to PTP/IP, but of course, I am not the expert here.
the ptpip port driver can be turned into a generic TCP/IP port driver.
the camlib driver for this then could send HTTP requests and parse the XML or what gets returned.
discovery integration is a bit harder, not sure where to hook the upnp stuff, either in a seperate tool or also somewhere in gphoto2
So what would be the next steps? As I said, I could try to contribute some code. But of course, I would need some guidance, since I never really worked with libgphoto2 so far (I was just a user of programs that build upon the library internally).
Maybe we should also ask the author of Iunxtio at Google Code. Recently (aka today) there was some new activity in the project. So maybe you already contacted him.
I have recently discovered gphoto2 and really like it. I know this conversation is 2 years ago now - but I am curious, how is the integration of Panasonic cameras/camcorders progressing, if at all? I have a HC-V520 / V520M and would love to use the --capture-video option with gphoto2. Is there any option to achieve this with gphoto2 or other packages? Thanks
hi Marcus, I too would be keen to see Lumix Web protocol somehow added to gphoto. I own a G80 and have been doing some astrophotography with it. I have built a driver for it on Windows for the ASCOM stack but now i would like to use gphoto to use it on Linux/RPi as other DSLR are supported (as I use also a Canon 6dMii).
The Ascom driver code for the Lumix stack i built is here: https://github.com/totoantibes/LumixCameraAscomDriver
It is in VB.net and is heavily inspired by some of the projects mentioned above. However I did manage also to implement a capture and download the image (RAW or JPG or Thumb) that was just captured over the HTTP/GET protocol.
I would not mind plowing into the libphotog2 to include this Lumix HTTP protocol which seems to be quite consistant across all Lumix cameras, but would need some guidance from you as to how to build it. I must say that the 2 sentence hints from above are not quite enough to get me started.
Thanks
Robert