Tweet Remote Control - Control your observatory with Twitter!

[Gib007]

Read more and download: http://www.lightvortexastronomy.com/tweet-remote-control.html

Tweet Remote Control is a Windows program written in Visual C# 2015, embedding the Tweetinvi and ASCOM references. It is meant to act as an inconspicuous safety backup, particularly useful to those with remote hosting for their astrophotography equipment.

The original motivation behind Tweet Remote Control is for when you lose remote control of the remote computer. This can happen due to various reasons, including TeamViewer failing or their server encountering connectivity problems. It is sometimes necessary to restart the computer, or TeamViewer alone, for example, in order to recover remote control. When all else fails, parking your mount and closing your roof may become necessary measures to protect the equipment against possible collisions and from the elements. It is here that Tweet Remote Control can assist, provided the remote computer has an active Internet connection, of course. This stops you needing to have someone to immediately attend to the equipment physically.

Put simply, Tweet Remote Control starts with Windows and runs in the background. It connects to a Twitter account of choice and therefore responds to specific commands, effectively sent by tweeting them via the connected Twitter account. The program monitors this connected Twitter account and reads new tweets made. If a tweet made matches a command written into the program, it deletes the tweet, executes the command received and tweets on your behalf (to update you on what is happening). Since all the program requires to function is a connection to a Twitter account, it need only be running on the remote computer with an active Internet connection - the rest is up to your tweet commands! Many features are supported, including control of ASCOM roofs, mounts and power relay switches (as well as Lunatico Astronomia's Seletek Dragonfly).

Tweet Remote Control ensures it always starts automatically with Windows (once you connect a Twitter account, that is), and re-authenticates with Twitter automatically every two minutes. This ensures the program is always active with minimum delay, even if the remote computer's Internet connection drops for a period of time. When Tweet Remote Control starts, if it is connected to a Twitter account, it does so minimised to your Windows system tray as a small, black and white icon labelled TRC. Here, the program will remain with no user input required and with no pop-ups whatsoever. The key is being always-on and always-ready without user input and without hassling the user with pop-ups or messages.

Finally, Tweet Remote Control is 100% free. Please feel free to contact me for bug reports or to request new features be added!

Current list of capabilities in version 1.4:

1. Restart your computer
2. Shut down your computer
3. Restart TeamViewer on your computer
4. Close an ASCOM roof
5. Open an ASCOM roof
6. Check the current status on an ASCOM roof
7. Park an ASCOM mount
8. Check the current status on an ASCOM mount
9. Open power relays (turn off) on a Dragonfly
10. Close power relays (turn on) on a Dragonfly
11. Check power relays on a Dragonfly
12. Open power relays (turn off) on an ASCOM power relay switch
13. Close power relays (turn on) on an ASCOM power relay switch
14. Check power relays on an ASCOM power relay switch

[hughgilhespie]

At last - a reason to have a Twitter account. 

Sounds like a wizard wheeze, well done and thanks!

Regards, Hugh

[Gib007]

On 12/12/2016 at 17:57, hughgilhespie said:

At last - a reason to have a Twitter account. 

Sounds like a wizard wheeze, well done and thanks!

Regards, Hugh

Haha, it's a pleasure! I myself find it useful. At one point TeamViewer just died and refused to reconnect. Their server seemed to be down and that was that. However, unfortunately my mount was tracking and my roof was open. In theory if I waited for 12:00 (midday) the next day, it would close the roof when my computer auto-reboots (as I set it up to do). However, I wasn't willing to let my mount track way beyond its physical limits (I should have enabled limits on EQMod to be fair!) and I didn't want to keep my roof open until midday. 

To save everything, I just tweeted TRC Park Mount and then TRC Close Roof and that was that. My equipment was safe!  If I wanted to, I could then tweet TRC Restart to cause a reboot of my computer, and knowing that my mount was parked, there was no risk of EQMod losing the park position reference. Therefore starting up everything again (providing TeamViewer's server recovered), meant everything was still good to go. 

[redtail]

Excellent....very useful.