RTML Asteroid hunting plan generator

[Lukas Demetz]

Hi there,

as I really appreciate the ACPSurvey software, but wanted a way to integrate it with Scheduler, I wrote this little app. Basically, you give it a region of the sky you want a plan for, with the dimensions of your CCD and focal lenght of your telescope, and it generates a RTML file ready to be imported into Scheduler. As it's a quick hack, there are basically no checks whenever the input data is correct, so take care
I will happily add or modify the functions based on your needs. To run, it needs at least ACP and NET Framework 4.5 installed.

Enjoy!

Lukas

[Bob Denny]

Very nice Lukas!! I am in a car driving but when I get back I'll move this to the ACP add ons section. Thank you very much!!

[Tao Chen]

Hello Lukas Demetz and Bob,

I have downloaded this program, but it does not work under windows10, is there a new version?

I am looking forward to your prompt reply. I would appreciate it very much.

[Dick Berg]

Chen,
I was able to execute the setup.exe file on Windows 11. But when I ran the application, It quit with this error:

error.png

Did you see this error, too?

If I click Quit, it exits the app. If I click Continue, it seems to do nothing - no RTML file is created. I'm sure there's not updated version.

There's no source code here, so it's not possible to see where the execution stops (i.e. which line of code). I think you're out of luck on this one.

[Tao Chen]

DicK

Yes, I have such a prompt and result, so I posted to ask what is the cause, I thought it was related to the system version.

[William Bristow]

Hi Tao, Dick.

The error pop-up message is reporting that the application can't find a particular Windows Registry entry, not likely a problem with the application itself but the application relies on a component that was included with older Windows O.S. versions, or more likely, a component of earlier versions of ACP that is no longer distributed with the current build of ACP.

I'm away from home for another week and only have an iPhone with me so I can't follow this up myself to see if it can be fixed easily but if you open the Windows Registry Editor and look in:
HKEY_Classes_Root > CLSID and search for the key (from Dicks screen grab): {401E2BE0-2298-4E90-96BA-B4FC0A29AD36} if it is missing then the application's called function won't run whatever Windows compatibility settings you try.

A quick search on the Microsoft developers pages from my iPhone this morning didn't find any hits for CLSID {401E2BE0-2298-4E90-96BA-B4FC0A29AD36} which makes me think it was never a Windows component but possibly a component of the ACP distribution a long time ago, only Bob or the application author would know what component the CLSID {401E2BE0-2298-4E90-96BA-B4FC0A29AD36} referred to and where it came from originally.

William.

[Tao Chen]

Thank you very much for your explanation. I am not familiar with the content of the registry, so I would like to wait for Bob to help explain it. Maybe he can give us some help and handling methods.

[Bob Denny]

Each time ACP has a major upgrade (6, 7, 8, 9) its Windows object ID's change as a result of ACP's Application Programming Interface having new properties and/or methods added. This is unavoidable. This 2013 program was probably written in in C# and with a "hard" reference to an ACP object. in 2013 ACP was at version 6.0. It is now at 9.2, so there have been three times that its API object ID's changed. Normally scripts refer to ACP's objects by name, and the names remain the same. However I'm thinking Lukas' program referred to that object by a hard/binary reference. Thus it is locked to ACP 6.x. I don't really have a practical way to wind the clock back apart from creating a virtual machine, installing ACP 6, and then spelunking the Object IDs. Then what?

One possible way to use Lukas' program would be for you to create Windows Virtual Machine and install ACP 6.0 from https://download.dc3.com/OlderACP/acp-6.0-setup.exe, then add the last HotFix from https://download.dc3.com/OlderACP/ac...ix-4-setup.exe. You can use your current ACP license with this old version and it's OK because it's not being used for live observing. Now install Lukas' program and it should run.

You can create Windows Virtual Machine using Hyper-V, VMWare Desktop Player or Oracle VirtualBox. Not trivial.

I have also sent a note to Lukas at my last known email address for him, asking about getting the sources and project files so it would be updated.

In the end, it may not even generate the Plans you really want. Eventually you will probably need to write your own generator scripts using the RTML 2.3 Programmer's Reference that comes with Scheduler.

[Tao Chen]

Thanks Bob.

We look forward to hearing good news from Lukas. We will use the old ACP you provided to test the program. If there is any problem, I will ask for your help again.

[Tao Chen]

Hi Bob,

I have installed ACP6.0, but I can't complete the registration with my latest serial number.

When I started Lukas' software, it said I needed to register to run it.