DIY ASCOM Driver for Aurora Cloud Sensor III

[Steve 1962]

Hi

I've been running one of the excellent Aurora Cloud Sensors for a while now, and when SGPro introduced Weather Station support, the obvious thing to do was to try to bring the two together.

Aurora Eurotech, the makers of the Aurora don't have an ASCOM driver, so I've had a go at writing one for myself. 

Much to my amazement, it works. 

If anyone would like to make use of it, or test it out - here's a link..

https://www.dropbox.com/s/udusyy2zgype824/Aurora%20III%20Setup.exe?dl=0

Please feel free to use it if you want, but please be aware that the last time I did any coding was with a Spectrum in about 1983, so this comes with no guarantees etc. It is pretty simple though - it only returns the ASCOM isSafe member based on the sensor settings, so it's hard to see how it could mess anything up.

Any constructive comments or suggestions would be appreciated.

Cheers

Steve

[hughgilhespie]

Hi Steve,

This will be very useful. I do have an Aurora Cloud Sensor but I have yet to install it so can't actually try the software yet but it fits in exactly with what I want to do, so thanks for the effort.

.

As to the coding, your Spectrun experience makes you relatively up to date! My heyday was programming a Nascom 1 with its geneous 900 bytes of user memory. No Basic, no assembler either so everything was done in raw machine code. Those were the days.........

Regards, Hugh

[Steve 1962]

Hi Hugh

Great - hope it works for you. I ran all last night with the latest SGPro and PHD2  beta's, with the cloud sensor and driver keeping the "Safety" spot in SGPro nice and green. As the sky lightened this morning, it went Red and stopped the sequence, then ran through a post - sequence script as planned  - so I'm very pleased with it.

I've also made significant progress with motorising the shutter - I just need to tidy up the electronics and finish the dome ASCOM driver - and I'll be fully "robotic".

How are you settling into your dome??

Steve

[daz]

I'll download this at home and test

What language did you use Steve, just out of interest?

[Steve 1962]

Hi Daz

I used Visual Basic - written and compiled in Visual Studio 2013 Community.

Let me know how you get on!

Cheers

Steve

[Steve 1962]

Out of interest ... has anyone had any success with my driver??

[msh1]

On 10/9/2016 at 10:43, Steve 1962 said:

Out of interest ... has anyone had any success with my driver??

hi steve i started using your driver a couple of weeks ago with sgpro it works great 

thanks 

mark

[Steve 1962]

Thanks Mark. That's great to know.

Steve

[msh1]

steve just a thought is it possible to have a say a 10 min timer?? that if clouds comes over it waits 10mins before closing observatory down also what settings do you use in aurora cloud detector

thanks mark

ps im using sgpro

[Steve 1962]

Hi Mark

The driver only returns an IsSafe parameter as True or False when asked by the connected application. This is in line with my understanding ASCOM devices should normally just sit there until asked to do something or provide  some information.

The functionality for timers etc. would (I think)  normally be handled by SGPro..so I'm pretty sure that this means the answer is "'fraid not!". If that doesn't work for you could you start an external timer on receipt of a false IsSafe  I wonder??

Here's screen grab of my settings...

Hope this helps

 

Steve

[msh1]

ah well it was just a thought thanks anyway

mark

ps cheers for the settings i need to tweek mine a bit 

[Steve 1962]

Hi

I've just received a report that the driver exe file linked in the original message is infected with a virus.

My machine and the file scan clear at my end.

Would anyone out there be willing to give it another scan to see if they can find anything please?

Many thanks in advance.

 

Steve