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Thread: ACP Plan Editor

  1. #1
    Join Date
    Jul 2010
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    Default ACP Plan Editor

    As en exercise in manipulating classes in VB.NET I have written a little editor for ACP Plans. This does NOT create plans (a la Planner), although you can manually enter a plan. It is basically a replacement for using Notepad.

    I keep making errors when modifying my plans, so I hope this will enforce a little bit of rigor in my editing. For example, I often get different filter numbers in Count / Interval / Binning / Filter commands. I also have trouble going from Local to UTC time, and often can't remember the various parameters of commands.

    Anyway, have a look if you like; let me know if it has problems The setup file is attached.
    Attached Files Attached Files
    Robert Brewington
    ACP 8.1 / Win 10 64bit
    Tak FSQ106, Paramount MX Mount
    SBig ST2000XM, STF8300M/STi

  2. #2
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    Default

    Nice!! Thanks for contributing this, Brew.
    -- Bob

  3. #3
    Join Date
    Apr 2013
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    Milton, ON, Canada
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    Default

    Hey Rob - this is cool! Thanks for doing this. Am just playing around with it now, but what a clever little program. Feature suggestion for v1.1 - if I open a blank plan and hit the red ?, it says "junk". Maybe it could say something a tiny bit more constructive. ;-)
    Anyway, I was blown away by the amount of effort you put in ! Especially the help documentation. Awesome ! Thanks again!

  4. #4
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    After this gets some miles in the hands of a few others, I'd be interested in distributing it with ACP Planner (free).
    -- Bob

  5. #5
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    Default

    Attached is a fixed version 1.1.0.0.

    - Plans were sometimes being saved in UTF encoding instead of Ascii. This causes ACP to report a plan error, showing a weird "character" something like ?=>.

    - Fixed Colin's catch of help request when no command is selected.

    Bob, feel free to use it however you like
    Attached Files Attached Files
    Robert Brewington
    ACP 8.1 / Win 10 64bit
    Tak FSQ106, Paramount MX Mount
    SBig ST2000XM, STF8300M/STi

  6. #6

    Default

    Hey Rob,
    Awesome useful program, I played with it, liked very much ,BrewPlanEdit will save me a lot of time in the future.
    Thank you.
    Antoine Vergara
    Lentin Observatory
    http://www.astrosurf.com/avastro/

  7. #7
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    California
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    Default

    I am a complete Newbie to ACP and this utility will be of tremendous help! Thank you Mr. Brewington! The Local Time feature alone is worth the money!

  8. #8
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    Default

    Robert,

    So far so good, except for:

    - Each time the file is saved in BrewPlanEdit it results in adding a comment to an existing comment. So you get " ;Comment ;Comment ;Comment " etc.


    -On my system, it appears that BrewPlanEdit saves the plan text file using "UTF-8" encoding, as oppoesed to ANSI. I know this because when I open the text file in Notepad and immediately save it in Notepad, the encoding method shown in the Save As dialogue box defaults to "UTF-8" even if I previously saved a file as ANSI. This UTF-8 encoding causes a compile error in ACP Schedule Browser during plan import that reads:

    Error at line 1: #interval has not ever been set
    (1) -> #startsetnum 1

    -Opening the plan in Notepad and saving it using ANSI encoding results in successful Schedule Browser compilation

  9. #9
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    Default

    Also, during Schedule Browser compilation I get:

    Target "#chill -25" cannot be used, will be skipped.
    Force subsequent images to "!TheSkyX Camera Add-on Images"
    Wizard Nebula (CoordJ2000)

    I assume #Chill is for StartupObs?

  10. #10
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    Default New Version posted

    I'm glad you like my utility.

    The Ascii problem was fixed in version 1.1, attached to an earlier post in this thread.

    I don't understand what is happening with the comments you are referring to; perhaps you could send me a sample file? I could not reproduce a problem like you describe

    - the #chill -25 command causes your plan to wait awhile until your camera reaches -25 degrees C. Does your camera support cooling?

    Also, it sounds like you are using Scheduler? I do not have that, so I can't check your situation. I thought Scheduler did not use ACP plans, but has a separate subset of commands available?

    Anyway, it doesn't sound like a BrewPlanEdit issue; it sounds like an issue using the command in the first place. If you create a plan in Notepad with the #chill command, does it work?

    Lastly, I have attached version 1.3, which has a couple of enhancements:

    1) Comments are colored green so I can distinguish them from real commands.

    2) There is an option to use a different font. We Older Men need bigger fonts than standard Windows

    3) You can pop your file out to a Notepad, do some editing, and the changed file is read back into BrewPlanEdit. Occasionally I want to do some type of special editing; typically this means doing a bunch of copy/paste commands. This way I can do things in Notepad and return to BrewPlanEdit. I do this rarely so it is not well tested.

    Brew
    Attached Files Attached Files
    Robert Brewington
    ACP 8.1 / Win 10 64bit
    Tak FSQ106, Paramount MX Mount
    SBig ST2000XM, STF8300M/STi

 

 

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