The right choice of Bayer pattern is crucial for correct colors, clean day images and error-free night image processing. Like almost all modern ZWO color sensors with Sony Starvis II technology, the ASI678MC uses an RGGB pattern. If this is set incorrectly or automatically recognized incorrectly, typical artefacts occur.
Below are the most important findings from the practical tests and the indi-allsky documentation.
After several nightly failures of my Allsky camera under indi-allsky, it turned out that my ZWO ASI678MC camera switches to 8-bit at night and the Image Worker crashes. To prevent this, I had to set the recording format manually.
The following entry ensures that the camera remains reliably in RAW16 mode and no longer switches to 8-bit:
{
"PROPERTIES": {},
"SWITCHES": {
"CCD_VIDEO_FORMAT": {
"on": ["ASI_IMG_RAW16"],
"off": ["ASI_IMG_RAW8"]
}
}
}
Since this adjustment, the system has been stable and there are no more nightly outages.
The official setup.sh from indi-allsky is functionally comprehensive and installs the entire runtime environment including the web server configuration. This behavior is useful for typical installations, but leads to problems if custom Apache settings are used – especially with Let’s-Encrypt certificates, user-defined VirtualHosts or specific redirect rules.
Practical operation showed that setup.sh regenerates the /etc/apache2/sites-available/indi-allsky.conf file each time it is run. As a result:
*** This post was updated with a new routine on Dezember 12th, 2025. ***
After updating indi-allsky, it often happens that the local self-signed certificate (e.g. allsky.local) is suddenly used again, although a valid Let’s Encrypt certificate was previously set up. I will explain how to do this elsewhere!
***UPDATE: BETTER SOLUTION: custom-setup.sh***
The cause is almost always that the update routines change or reset the Apache configuration of the system. This article shows how to recognize the problem, fix it properly and configure the setup so that it will survive future updates.
indi-allsky can retrieve weather data such as temperature, humidity or cloud cover directly from the OpenWeather API and integrate it into the image caption. This requires a valid API key and the coordinates of the location. The setup is done in the web interface under Sensors, where OpenWeather is selected as the source and the API key is entered. In addition, the longitude and latitude of the camera’s location must be set under “Location”.