ACP 6.0 Hot Fix 1 Released

[Bob Denny]

ACP 6.0 Hot Fix 1 has been released. Your support and upgrades must be current as of May 1, 2011 in order to install this update. Here are the new features and other changes in this Hot Fix:

Product Improvements and Changes

1. It is now possible to specify the imager readout modes that will be considered "normal" and "fast" for ACP, using a new file RoModeInfo.txt. ACP Help has a new section on imager readout mode control, augmenting the info already present in observing plan documentation.
2. AutoFocus will be done with the camera in "fast" readout mode if available.
3. While acquiring images, the current place in the plan (set, target, repeat, filter, count) will be logged just before the image starts. This provides a way to know where you are in the plan if you aren't using the web UI.
4. The dome slaving will now allow altitude slaving with the shutter closed if the "slave while closed" advanced option is enabled.
5. Limits on dome geometry values have been increased frm 2m to 10m for very large telescopes.
6. The FindBrightStar() function used in ACP-style autofocus has been fixed (again) to prevent flipping a German mount when going to the bright star.
7. The reference and help links in Scripting Guide - Useful Tools and Information have been updated.
8. The Office debugger and Visual Studio .NET debugger info has been updated.

Bug Fixes

1. The auto-centering logic has been fixed for the case where the telescope is operating in J2000 mode.
2. A timing bug which randomly caused guiding startup failures ("no guider measurements") has been fixed. The web guide error display is now suppressed during guider startup, allowing the startup logic exclusive use of guiding errors.
3. The dome slaving logic has been corrected so that the slaving tolerance is applied separately to altitude and azimuth. Thus, if the altitude changes by more than the tolerance, an altitude slew will be issued even if no azimuth slew is needed. This was a bug.
4. The rotator control applet has been fixed to prevent creation of multiple copies of the rotator driver under certain conditions.
5. A failure of slew-ahead (out of safety limits) no longer causes the current image to fail and not be saved.
6. If an observing plan requests flats and is run too late for those flats, the flats will just be skipped and observing will continue.
7. The AutoFlat script was fixed to remove a stray reference to the old ~plan-acquire script (chain-back logic).
8. The documentation for Util.EnforceSlewLimits() has been corrected.
9. Filter names are now cleaned of any illegal file path/name characters before being used in AutoFlat.vbs.
10. The Hot Fix installer registers the ACP Telescope Hub the correct way (was wrong in the original 6.0 installer).
11. The BoltwoodFile weather server was fixed for errors in the 'unsafe' weather code
12. The missing SampleFlipConfig.txt file is now installed.
13. The documentation has been corrected for missing information on expected pointing update time in FlipConfig.txt.
14. The spelling of the $PLANNAME token in File/folder customization documentation has been corrected.

As usual, see http://acp.dc3.com/download.html