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What is in each ASCOM Library package

ASCOM Library functionality is delivered in five packages to minimise the file size footprint and to ensure that only required functionality is compiled into applications, drivers and devices.

The following sections describe the contents of each library package.

ASCOM.Alpaca.Components Package
  • Alpaca client toolkit
  • Alpaca device discovery component
  • Async Alpaca device discovery methods
ASCOM.Alpaca.Device Package
  • Discovery response support for Alpaca devices.
ASCOM.Com.Components Package (Windows only)
  • COM client toolkit
  • Profile tool to query and manipulate the ASCOM Profile store
  • Chooser tool to enable users to select a specific COM driver.
ASCOM.AstrometryTools Package
  • SOFA library with the same functionality as the Platform's SOFA component.
  • Transform component with the same functionality as the Platform's Transform component.
  • NOVAS 3.1 component with the same functionality as the Platform's NOVAS component.
  • NOVASCOM component with the same functionality as the Platform's NOVASCOM component.
  • Kepler component with the same functionality as the Platform's Kepler component.
  • AstroUtilities component that provides useful capabilities including:
    • Creating a one year almanac for the given event, year and location.
    • Returning a list of rise and set events of a particular type that occur on a particular day at a given latitude, longitude and time zone
    • Calculating the fraction of the Moon's surface that is illuminated at a given time.
    • Returning the current number of leap seconds.
    • Returning an estimate of the current DelatT value.
    • Calculate the Julian date for a given DateTime value.
    • Return the current Julian date.
ASCOM.Tools Package
  • Console logger component that exposes the ILogger interface.
  • TraceLogger component that exposes the ILogger interface, with functionality similar to the Platform's TraceLogger component.
  • Utilities component that provides capabilities that are not straightforwardly available from .NET APIs. These capabilities include:
    • Sexagesimal Conversions
    • Degrees to degree:minute:second conversions
    • Degrees to degree:minute conversions
    • Degrees to hour:minute:second conversions
    • Degrees to hour:minute conversions
    • Hours to hour:minute:second conversions
    • Hours to hour:minute conversions
    • Julian date functions
    • ObservingConditions property conversions
    • Coordinate validation and management functions
  • XMLProfile component to create and manage an ASCOM Profile as an XML file.
ASCOM.Common.Components Package
  • ASCOM device interface definitions
  • Asynchronous client extension methods
  • Class definitions for all Alpaca JSON responses
  • Constants for defined Alpaca protocol element names e.g. parameter names for HTTP PUT operations
  • Class definitions for Alpaca discovery responses.
  • Enums for Alpaca protocol options (such as how to return data from Camera.ImageArray) and Alpaca error numbers.
  • COM error number special values such as minimum and maximum values that define the valid range.
  • Helper functions to make handling Exceptions from Alpaca devices easier
  • ILogger and IProfile interface definitions
  • Functions to list, manipulate and validate ASCOM device type names.
See Also