IMX462: how to increase sensitivity in low light conditions

Hello,

Where did you get the camera module(s)? Arducam
Model number of the product(s)? B0333
What hardware/platform were you working on? Raspberry Pi 4B
Instructions you have followed. (link/manual/etc.) Arducam documentation – Quickstart 
Problems you were having?

The camera is working on doing meteor detection during the night. The program uses a python script which uses under the hood gstreamer and the libcamerasrc plugin. Something like:

libcamerasrc ! video/x-raw,width=1280,height=720,framerate=25/1,format=UYVY   
                     ! appsink

Images are produced but the sensitivity to fine stars is too low in the current configuration. I would like to manually adapt the libcam configuration file to increase the gain or whatever. I am using a file called arducam-pivariety.json for that, which contains the settings from a similar imx290.json file provided or a new_imx290.json which I have seen posted in the forum. Is this OK? And if so, what fields and values would be recommended to set in order to increase the sensitivity?

The tagged version 0.3.0 of libcamera has been released. There is a commit in this release ipa: rpi: Add HDR support which seems to improve on the sensitivity problem. The commit mentions

We allow the tuning file to supply the maximum spatial gain value,
rather than the whole curve (though it can supply this if it wants).

Can somebody explain what it is meant exactly? I am currently using a tuning file like imx290.json named arducam-pivariety.json in the directory /usr/share/libcamera/ipa/rpi/vc4/.

And when will Arducam release libcamera based on this new version?

Hi,
We would follow in the footsteps of the Raspberry Pi: