Developer to rewrite ASA Autoslew and Sequence?

[AnakChan]

Folks,

[Mods: TBH I think I'd get better traction with this in the Mount section but since it's software I've placed it here. Will leave it to your discretion if this is better left here or moved to the Mount section]

I've been going through ~19 months of "pain" with ASA's AutoSlew and Sequence for my DDM60 mount. As the mount is obsolete, ASA doesn't even provide newer versions of AutoSlew & Sequence for the obsolete models.

I have a very strong preference to use N.I.N.A. and currently jump back 'n forth between the ASA/MDL software and N.I.N.A. N.I.N.A. has all sorts of TrackingRate ASCOM issues with ASA's AutoSlew ASCOM implementation, and naturally no such N.I.N.A. plugin to try to do an All-Sky and more importantly MLPT (localised pointing) models.

Even if I don't use N.I.N.A. and try to use the "vendor recommended" approach of ASA/MDL, ASA's Sequence bombs out with my Takahashi µ250CRS ASCOM focuser.

I'm trying to seek a developer who can recode/rewrite the entire AutoSlew and a N.I.N.A plugin for this and depending on the cost, setting aside a budget for it, or may talk to other ASA owners with similar problems to participate in contributing to such an initiative.

The question I have is, "where do I start?". How does one source a developer to write such software? I'm based in Perth therefore if someone here needs access to the mount, I'm more than willing to help in that respect. I'm also open to other kinds of solutions e.g. say a RaspberryPi that can drive the mount and support Alpaca & INDI, or if someone else suggests an On-Step or SiTech-type solution (drivers till need to be written).

Any initial guidance is truly appreciated.

[RB]

I'll leave it here for now.

RB
:thumbsup:

[g__day]

Real dumb question maybe - but if you had the original source code or specifications - could you just ask ChatGPT to re-write it for you in whatever programming language you would prefer?

I hear ChatGPT is kinda amazing at that kind of ask; with the right input it might be very, very quickly achievable...

[AnakChan]

Sadly don't have the source code but I've been googling to see if one could decompile Visual Basic (I think it's written in Visual Basic). I did check on ChatGPT but not that sophisticated yet.

[phyton42]

I recently wanted to have an ASCOM driver written to connect my (currently unsupported) camera to the platform. I used Airtasker. Got several replies within 24 hrs. But for me, individually, was cost prohibitive. Good luck.

[appiice]

Hello Mark

I have used Fivver in the past to do some 3d drawings, Logo and a theme sound ( Youtube opening ) the price was very cheap for all three things, the last two were a delight to deal with, the 3d cad guy not so much, he thought he could increase the fee when the file was ready, threating to cancel and report him was all it took to get him to stick to the quoted amount.
Generally, the people doing the creating are in non first world countries and work quickly and cheaply ( compared to here ). Would use them again if I had a need.

[AlexN]

I'll look into it and let you know.

I've been a .net developer for 9 or 10 years now, and most ascom drivers are .NET based, so there's a potential there that I may be able to assist.

I'll have a look tomorrow and see what the go is.

[AlexN]

What camera? Again, I may be able to assist. Ascom camera interface is reasonably straight forward (I've been doing a bit of this recently because the legacy sbig cameras don't have an ascom driver.

[AnakChan]

Actually there's been some progress in this space :-

https://github.com/photon1503

User Photon wrote up 2 main pieces :-
1) an ASA-version of DeviceHub that "bypasses" ASCOM calls that AutoSlew doesn't support
2) a N.I.N.A. plug-in that'll help build a sky model POX file that AutoSlew understands

In my brief test, so far it's been working. This has eliminated mostly the need for MaximDL & ASA's Sequence. The only time MaximDL & ASA's Sequence is still needed is for MLPT (local pointing model for longer focal length scopes). This is apparently harder to tackle.

[Atmos]

I might need to give this a go at some point, not so much for NINA but for better more reliable commands.

[AlexN]

Cool. They should be public code repos, so if you need anything added/altered at all, let me know and I can add it then ask the author to merge in my changes.

Flick me a PM if you need anything.

[AnakChan]

I'm testing as I'm posting this. The fundamental ASCOM driver is still AutoSlew along with all its shortcomings (e.g. lack of TrackingRate support, TZ issues, etc.) where N.I.N.A. is expecting full ASCOM compliance.

Photon's ProxyHub sits between N.I.N.A. and AutoSlew just like how ASCOM DeviceHub or Remote Server would. But ProxyHub will pass though to AutoSlew whatever AutoSlew supports, but interjects ASCOM calls AutoSlew does not support. It seems to work well enough to allow N.I.N.A. to operate smoothly. So this addresses N.I.N.A.'s 3-star Polar Alignment routine.

As for the N.I.N.A. ASA Plug-In, it's based on the N.I.N.A. 10Micron Tools Plug-In but just modified to make the output AutoSlew readable. Attached screenshot is my 50 point model which took only 20 mins (much faster than ASA's Sequence AutoPoint!).

I did a 20 min single Lum sub with my Pentax 125SDP (with reducer) at a 616mm focal length using my ASI6200MM camera at Bin1x1. Shared here is the full frame, and a 1:1 and it's pretty much round.

This has streamlined my workflow considerably.

[AnakChan]

Thx for the offer! Will keep that in mind!!