About

MountMonitor Help v.3.37 03/01/2021

MountMonitor and this help file are written by Nicolàs de Hilster and products of Starmountain Survey & Consultancy BV.
Copyright 2018 - 2021 by Nicolàs de Hilster, Starmountain Survey & Consultancy BV. All rights reserved. No part of this help file may be reproduced or distributed in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, or used for similar software developments, without the prior written permission of the author.

For information and questions you may contact us through:
Web: www.DeHilster.info
Web: www.Starmountain.nl
E-mail: info@DeHilster.info

Revision list

v.3.37 (03/01/2021)

• Further fix for bug that prevented horizontal zoom changes for screens wider than 2000px.
• Added on-line help option to help menu.

v.3.36 (02/01/2021)

• Fixed bug that prevented horizontal zoom changes for screens wider than 2000px.

v.3.35 (20/07/2020)

• Added shift option to axial velocity and displacement graphs and to STDEV graphs.

v.3.34 (18/07/2020)

• Placed text boxes in JPanel and added descriptive headers to them;
• Changed the colour of the scales to a darker gray;
• Fixed a bug that caused the NIST server setting not to be used.

v.3.33 (17/07/2020)

• Inverted order of messages in text boxes, last one on top now;
• Removed history length option, now defaulted to 50 lines.

v.3.32 (16/07/2020)

• Fixed bug that froze MountMonitor when hitting the Accept-button in the preference window when mount status is above 6;

v.3.31 (14/07/2020)

• Fixed bug speed data displaying when reference is mount target;
• Checked axial displacement calculations.

v.3.30 (31/05/2020)

• Fixed several bugs in :GaXa#/:GaXb# command handling and presentation of the data;
• Added preference file checking to see if values found in the file match the capabilities of the program (required to launch new versions).
• Changed number and values of tolerance settings in prefs menu.
• Improved windows resize, now correctly positioning bottom three text boxes.
• Improved the moment on which the newly set preferences are injected into the main loop.

Known issues:

• Windows resize to a size smaller than the graph lengths causes (integrated) axial speed data to become corrupted. Reset buffers clears this issue, but this still needs a proper fix.

v.3.20 (27/05/2020)

• Beta version in which the :GaXa# and :GaXb# commands were added to produce axial velocity graphs for RA and DEC, based on direct axis readings.

v.3.15 (25/05/2020)

• Repaired a bug that prevented the check on Sidereal Tracking Rate to be executed.
• Added automatic timezone offsets for both pc and mount to be able to compare times when they are in different timezones (ie. Mount in UTC, PC in UTC+2).

v.3.14 (24/05/2020)

• Added more mount settings checks.
• Darkened the green in the graphs.
• Prefs pop-up remembers last opened pane.
• RA tolerance now can be used in arc seconds ["] or seconds of time [s].

v.3.13 (23/05/2020)

• Improved verification of tracking rate, now checking all possible deviations from Sidereal tracking when in LX200 mode.

v.3.12 (23/05/2020)

• Improved LX200 interfacing.
• Extended checklist capabilities in Miscellaneous tab of preferences.

v.3.11 (21/05/2020)

• Added timeOut to Licence checking routine.
• Added verification of Refraction Correction Setting to Preferences (added the Miscellaneous tab for that).
• Implemented non-halting alert box.

v.3.10 (16/04/2020)

• Added ASCOM interface, rebuilt preferences pop-up window.

v.3.03 (02/04/2020)

• Added NIST server to Time graph, rebuilt sequence loop, added reference to mount target coordinates option.

v.3.02 (27/03/2020)

• Added delta-time drift value to time-graph.

v.3.01 (23/03/2020)

• Swapped colours time graph, extended help-file, explaining how the time-graph should be analysed.

v.3.00 (21/03/2020)

• Added time graph.

v.2.11 (09/02/2020)

• Fixed bug that ignored tolerances at start-up.

v.2.10 (01/12/2019)

• Improved lay-out, now graphs remain below each other also on high-res monitors.

v.2.01 (23/5/2019)

• Debugged seismometer interface, now disgarding non-seismometer input.

v.2.00 (14/2/2019)

• Debugged conversion negative RA and DEC figures.
• Implemented Fast Fourier Transformation.
• Implemented seismometer interface.
• Polling frequency now controls whole four-command-sequence instead of each command.

v.1.31 (11/1/2019)

• Debugged nullpointerexception after slewing.

v.1.30 (10/1/2019)

• Debugged running standard deviation (became corrupt in v.1.20), extended it with options for 120, 300, and 900 seconds.
• Added preferences pop-up.
• Moved Polling, Log, History and Tolerance menus to the preference pop-up.
• Added automation options for reset, graph dump and file close to the pop-up.
• Added Delay after slewing time to the pop-up.
• Added option to the pop-up to change the ratio between the graphs and text boxes.
• Added help menu (opening this file, a CHM is under construction) and about box to the main menu.

v.1.21 (8/1/2019)

• auto reconnect after TCP/IP connection is lost.
• changed order getting mount id, firmware etc to get altitude and azimuth in high-res format.
• moved “unable to connect” message to status window.
• closing files and saving prefs when parked.

v.1.20 (6/1/2019)

• Graph dump on exit and buffer reset with greyed-out section where it overlaps the previous graph.
• Added range between Min and Max in log file.
• Added Log menu with option "only when tracking" or "all".
• Added status text box.
• Halting data collection based on Mount status and Log menu setting.
• Implemented the following commands:
  • :GVN# Get firmware number.
  • :GVP# Get product name.
  • :GETID# Returns: a 20-digit (64-bit) number unique for each mount.
  • :pS# Returns the side of the pier on which the telescope is currently positioned.
  • :GZ# Get the telescope azimuth (only displayed at the start of the log file).
  • :GA# Get telescope altitude (only displayed at the start of the log file).
• Background titles scale with window width.
• Improved automatic centring of background titles.