software help

Affiliation
American Association of Variable Star Observers (AAVSO)
Sun, 01/17/2016 - 12:08

I'm looking for a special volunteer.  We currently have 9 telescopes operational in the AAVSO robotic telescope network, and we're reaching the stage where help is needed to keep the local software up to date and running.  The software packages involved are MaximDL, ACP, ACP Scheduler and FocusMax, all running in the Windows environment.  Another couple of telescopes are in the queue to be added during 2016.

We need to upgrade all of the ACP packages to V8.0.  Our experience on the first couple we tried is that things break, as any script you've modified is likely not going to work.  So each system takes some handholding to upgrade.  Autofocus with ACP/Focusmax works on some telescopes, but not others, so some night-time debugging to figure out why will be needed (it appears to be a conflict between ACP and Focusmax, especially relating to catalogs).  We have one inexpensive cloud sensor that the vendor says works with ACP, but needs to be integrated into the system.  File naming is not consistent, so the configuration files need to be updated.  Some systems, like BSM_NM, have an operator-controlled roof closure and it would be nice to interface with the roof software so that ACP can close the roof automatically.  That gives you the basic idea of the types of tasks.

Scripting is done in Javascript, perl and visual basic.  I'd estimate ~10hrs/week at the beginning, decreasing once everything gets configured right, and having "bumps" whenever a new vendor release takes place and the changes have to be propagated to all systems.

Let me know privately if you are interested in this task.   If we have multiple people volunteering (yeah, right...), I think this can also be made into a team effort.

Arne