These scripts are intended to support connecting to Canon PowerShot (point and shoot) and similar models over WiFi from a PC. They may or may not work with other Canon product lines.
The supported cameras use PTP/IP with UPnP for discovery and pairing. These scripts provide support only for the UPnP portion, a PTP/IP client such as chdkptp or gphoto2 must be connected after the UPnP sequence to interact with the camera.
They are primarily intended for use on Linux, since Windows can natively send UPnP responses recognized by the cameras, however, they can also be used from from Windows with msys2 msys or mingw python, and likely other Windows Pythons. They are also known to work on MacOS 11, 12 and likely work on other versions.
See this CHDK forum thread for additional details.
Responds to UPnP M-SEARCH requests for upnp:rootdevice and ssdp:all
Note ptpip-canon-upnp-helper.py may respond to these queries from devices
other than Canon cameras. The response also falsely identifies itself as a
Windows server, because Canon firmware requires it. This is probably harmless in
most cases, but SSDP/UPnP aware software might display the configured name in a
UI, or conceivably become confused in some other way.
Note IPv6 is not supported by these scripts. In my testing, the cameras only attempted IPv4. However, I have not tested an IPv6-only environment
Responds HTTP GET requests with an XML file containing a suitable description.
By default, started automatically by ptpip-canon-upnp-helper.py, so you
shouldn't need to run it directly. When using native windows (mingw etc)
python, it will be opened in a new window.
python3 -m venv env/ptpip-helpers. env/ptpip-helpers/bin/activatepip install ssdpyTo connect from chdkptp you must
build chdkptp with PTP/IP support by setting PTPIP_SUPPORT=1 in config.mk
ptpip-canon-upnp-helper.py LAN_IP_AddressLAN_IP_Address must be an IPv4 address (not hostname) on the computer you
want to connect the camera to, reachable from the wifi network the camera
will connect from.
Use -n to set the name that will appear in the Canon UI. It defaults to the
computer hostname, as returned by socket.gethostname()
Pass -P to ptpip-canon-upnp-helper.py to set the port used for description
requests. Default is 8043
UPnP requests are listened for on UDP port 1900. This is defined on the camera and cannot be changed.
To provide a persistent ID for your connection ptpip-canon-upnp-helper.py will
create a file named ptpip-canon-helper.uuid in the current directory if it does
not already exist. Cameras require a UPnP response from the corresponding GUID
for every connection after pairing completes.
To connect a camera, go to the connection menu on the camera, select computer and "Add a Device..."
If it works, you should see the hostname of your computer (or the name specified with the -name option) listed on the Canon display.
This process will generate some requests to the scripts, which will show the requesting IP in standard output, like
INFO:ptpip-upnp-helper:Received qualifying M-SEARCH from ('192.168.123.45', 58981)
192.168.123.45 - - [29/Mar/2021 22:36:47] "GET /ptpip-canon-desc-helper.xml HTTP/1.1" 200 -Select the name and press set. The camera will go into a screen that says
Connected to device <name>
To connect in chdkptp, enter
connect -h=<camera_ip>You can use the helper output to get the camera IP, but as noted above, beware queries from other devices may also be present.
To prevent the camera from timing out and closing the connection, use
!con:ptp_get_object_handles()The screen will go black. To re-enable the screen, on DryOS cameras use
=post_levent_to_ui(4482)or on VxWorks
=post_levent_to_ui(4418)chdkptp starting from r1161 in the default configuration does both of the above steps automatically, based on the settings
cam_connect_set_ptp_mode
cam_connect_unlock_uiFile transfers, non-shooting script and most other non-shooting related operations should work. Switching to shooting mode or shooting fail on some cameras. In some cases, this can be worked around with additional hacking. See the thread linked at the start for additional discussion.
Use the Canon UI or dis in chdkptp.
Use control+c to kill the scripts.