Version History

Astrometry Tools - Add support for use in 32bit and 64bit Android applications..

NOVAS - Improved ra cio bin file handling to enable use when the file cannot be located and the internal mechanic is used.

Transform - Added observed mode to enable unrefracted topocentric coordinates to be converted to refracted topocentric coordinates i.e. observed coordinates.

Alpaca Clients - Fixed bug where query strings in HTTP GETs of members that take parameters had multiple leading "?" characters.

DeviceCapabilities - Added VersionIntroduced function.

DeviceCapabilities - Added InterfaceHasMember function to report whether a member is present in a specified device type and interface version.

DeviceCapabilities - Added IsSupportedInterface and DeviceCapabilities.IsValidInterface methods.

Alpaca clients - Removed duplicate keep-alive element from the Connection header.

Alpaca Clients - Fixed incorrect exception message when the client times out.

Alpaca Clients - Change the timeout used for Connected-GET, Connecting, Connect() and Disconnect() from the standard timeout to the establish communications timeout, which is usually shorter and facilitates quicker return to the client when the Alpaca device cannot be reached.

Alpaca Clients - Make InterfaceVersion use the establish communications retry interval because some applications call this before trying to connect. Change the delay between communications retries from 1.0 second to 0.1 seconds and reduce the number of socket error re-trys to 1 to speed up the process when the device cannot be reached.

Alpaca Clients - Fix cosmetic issue in exception messages when reporting not implemented exceptions. Previously the exception added extraneous "is not implemented" text to the supplied message.

Asynchronous method extensions - Fixed an issue where ConnectAsync and DisconnectAsync caused "member not found" exceptions when used with Platform 6 devices. These methods now require the device type and device interface version to determine whether to use the Platform 6 or Platform 7 connection mechanic.

Platform Utilities - Added the OSBuildName function to return the descriptive name of the operating system e.g. Windows 11 (24H2).

ASCOM.Tools Package - Breaking Change

All astrometry related functions including Transform, SOFA and NOVAS, have been moved into a new package: ASCOM.AstrometryTools in order to reduce the size and complexity of the ASCOM.Tools package and increase convenience for developers who don't require astrometry features.

Class and object names (including namespaces) have been retained as far as possible, the major naming change is that astrometry features in the ASCOM.Tools.Utilities component are now in a new ASCOM.Tools.AstroUtilities component in the new ASCOM.AstroUtilities package.

The principle developer changes required are to:

• Install the new ASCOM.AstrometryTools package from NuGet

• Add the package to the project

• Add a "using ASCOM.AstrometryTools;" reference to relevant classes

• In the codebase, change astrometry function references from ASCOM.Tools.Utilities.XXX() to ASCOM.Tools.AstroUtilities.XXX()

Added - Support for Platform 7 interfaces including Connect(), Disconnect(), DeviceState, SwitchAsync() and SwitchValueAsync().

Added - Client Toolkit awaitable Task extensions for the Connect(), Disconnect(), SwitchAsync() and SwitchValueAsync() methods.

Added - Windows ARM64 support for NOVAS and SOFA components.

Added - DeviceCapabilities.IsPlatform7OrLater function and improved help text for other DeviceCapabiities methods.

Updated - SOFA to release 19 - 11th October 2023.

Fix - Include the driver's original exception as an inner exception when throwing exceptions from Com.DriverAccess to make behaviour consistent with Platform behaviour.

Fix - Prevent two unintended NullReferenceExceptions in Com.DriverAccess when handling exceptions returned by drivers.

Fix - Accept an array of integers for Gains to ensure that drivers remain usable when clients use the ASCOM Library.

Fix - The default TraceLogger log path on non-Windows systems is once again "Documents/ascom"; it unintentionally became "Documents" in the 1.0.111 release from October 2023.

Fix - Remove a small error (6th decimal place) in AstroUtililties JulianDate function.

Fix - Eliminate a stack imbalance when returning from x86 native library calls by specifying the CDECL calling convention.

Fix - Alpaca Clients did not set the remote device number correctly when changed through the ClientConfiguration class.

Alpaca Clients - Fix issue that caused Alpaca client initialisation to fail on Android and similar AOT compile platforms.

Re-release of version 1.0.109 without additional features and changes that are intended for a future release.

ASCOM.COM - Added PlatformUtilities.IsPlatformInstalled() function.

ASCOM.COM - Profile.GetDrivers() now returns an empty list instead of an exception if no drivers are found.

ASCOM.COM - Fixed an issue where interface version 1 Focusers would have Connected called instead of Link

ASCOM.Tools - Added a NOVAS3.1 component to Utilities.

ASCOM.Tools - Added MoonPhase, MoonIllumination and EventTimes astrometry functions to Utilities.

Added an Almanac generator to Utilities. This writes a whole year almanac for a particular event to an ILogger instance. Supported events are:

• Rise and set times for the planets, sun and moon

• Start and end times for Civil, Nautical and Astronomical twilight

ASCOM.Tools - Added missing linux-arm32 native SOFA library.

Alpaca Clients - Refactored base class to enable error number and message to be extracted more easily.

Alpaca Clients - Added support for trusting user generated certificates.

Alpaca Clients - Improved handling of Alpaca management information during discovery on Linux, Arm and MacOS operating systems.

First production release.