It’s a difficult decision. It comes down to two and a half issues: context size, features and Ethernet access.
Ethernet is the easier one to explain: I want to record to the companion computer’s drive, where I can keep track of timestamps and file naming conventions better than most cameras’ SD cards. I can live without Ethernet, but once I have an RTSP connection to a camera (Siyi, VISCA, etc) it’s a small step to use the same connection for gimbal control.
Features: I can never predict which features the larger AP community finds useful. Zoom is important in my application, as well as focus–I hate videos where all the interesting parts are unusable because autofocus is hunting for faces in the nothingness of a flat blue sky. Seeing as I know the exact distance from camera to target, both are easy to set if the camera supports it. I’m hearing from you here that zoom is easy for you to add to AP. This can change my calculus about writing my own driver.
Size of context: Siyi SDK documentation is 8 pages including sample packets in hex. It’s a self-contained system with clear boundaries. VISCA documentation from Sony is the same way. With AP–when it comes to more out-of-the-way features–just finding out if a feature exists can be a project. My questions about SYSID_TARGET in the other thread are an example. This is not a criticism of AP. AP is an amazing piece of software. But for less popular features, the only way to understand how they work is to read the code, and it’s never just one or two source file. My main tool for understanding AP features is grep(1). I understand and accept that this is how a project evolves when it is an amalgamation of many developers over many years scratching different itches. I’d rather have it like that than any other option. But when the choice is between writing 300 lines of Python or spending weeks chasing down features in an evolving source tree–it’s a difficult choice.
All this said, in this particular case, I’m only 300 lines of Python in. If my itch is something the larger AP finds useful, I’m happy to work with you instead of by myself. We should probably take this part of the conversation to the SYSID_TARGET thread.
Ari.