AutoSlew and ACP 7

[YahooGroup]

This is a transfered topic from the ASA Yahoo Group.

 

Posted By:  hadrian1805 Tue Apr 2, 2013 5:03 pm

 

I should know better but I replaced my old XP 32bit machine with a Win 7 64bit
pc to run the telescope and upgraded to ACP 7. AutoSlew 5.1.1.2 won't connect
with ACP 7. With a new install of ASCOM 6 sp1 trying to start AutoSlew from ACP
or trying to Connect ACP to a running AutoSlew I get a Microsoft.VisualBasic
window pop up with the message 'Conversion from String "" to type 'Integer' is
not valid'. The ACP window has the correct values from AutoSlew displayed at
this point but if I click on the 'ok' button to close the VisualBasic window,
ACP disconnects.

I seem to remember this happening in some early versions of AutoSlew and there
was much finger-pointing about which software was at fault. Can a solution be
found or can someone recommend something other than going backwards?

Bill Martin

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Posted By: bernd_eppinger Wed Apr 3, 2013 1:35 am

Hi, Bill,

I remember that somebody had a similar problem shortly after I had bought my DDM60 (quite some time ago), but I can't find the post anymore.

As far as I remember, the problem was that Autoslew seems to use locale dependent numeric formats in the INI-file. Most importantly, the different interpretations of "." and "," between e.g. German and English WINDOWS seemed to be a problem.

If the bug hasn't been fixed in the mean time, and if you use your configurations or ini-files from your previous XP-machine, it might help to set the numeric format to the same values it had under XP. If you can't remember it anymore, you might try to swap the decimal separator between "." and "," and make sure that the character you use for it is not used anywhere else.


Best regards,

Bernd

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Posted By: hadrian1805 Wed Apr 3, 2013 10:29 am

Hi Bernd,

Good tip. It has to be something like this so I will check the .ini files from
Autoslew and dig out the old file from the XP machine in the corner. ACP 7
seems to accept the info from Autoslew and displays it correctly at first but
when I close the popup window it disconnects. ACP 6 didn't do this with
Autoslew 5.1.1.2 in XP so I have too many variables at the moment.

Kind regards

Bill

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Posted By: dale.liebenberg Wed Apr 3, 2013 10:36 am

Hi Bill,
I use ACP 7 on Win 7, 64 bit without problems connecting to AS.
I had this problem many moons ago and it had to do with missing data from my observatory ascom connection, which connects at the same time as AS.
Check under ACP preferences and/or open your other hardware connection setups and maybe you can find the problem.
 
Dale

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Posted By: hadrian1805 Wed Apr 3, 2013 12:04 pm

Ah. Quite right. I forgot that the dome connects with the telescope if it is
enabled. I will disable them separately and see what happens. Thanks Dale.

Bill

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Posted By: dale.liebenberg Wed Apr 3, 2013 1:31 pm

What dome controller are you using? It is not PierTech by any chance?
 
Dale

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Posted By: hadrian1805 Wed Apr 3, 2013 8:11 pm

Hi Dale,

Yes, it's Pier Tech and this was the problem. I reinstalled the original ASCOM
driver and it does not give the VB error now. Sadly it has a problem with the
new pier so I have to disable this at the moment. Been here before and I need
to get Darren to do a fix (again). I have a new Foster Systems controller that
I was going to use but this also has a (different) pier problem. Stan Ralph has
not responded to this yet. Forces of Darkness...

Bill