Quote:
Originally Posted by Paul Haese
Don't worry Jase. I have been looking and the purpose of this thread is to find out which is better. Price point is an important consideration, but I want the software to work more than the price. I wasted money on CCDsoft, so I have learnt my lesson here.  Total smooth automation is my primary goal here. If it means I pay more for software then so be it. |
Good to hear Paul. To be diplomatic, all observatory automation software packages will undoubtedly do what you are after. Completely automated imaging runs with everything in between, not to mention automated starts up, shutdown and bad weather recovery. How they execute the data acquisition process and perhaps the flexibility available will be the distinguishing points.
I liken CCDAP as a blackbox design where as ACP you can actually look under the bonnet to see its inter-workings. Don't like the flow of a control script? - you can make changes to it. For this reason alone, you'll find many research and education institutes utilise ACP. Not to mention it caters for multiple users on a system (commercial license required) and has a web interface which is ideal for operating over slow, high latency links. Of course, you can still use CCDAP in a similar manner via a remote desktop session. The leading rental telescope operations such as GRAS and Lightbuckets all run ACP but have heavily customised it to improve their operations. Bob is actively working on numerous new features listening to the ACP user base. You can view some of them here -
http://dc3.ideascale.com/