Weasner's Astronomy Software Feedback

ASTRONOMY SOFTWARE FEEDBACK

Last updated: 30 June 2004

This page is for user comments on Astronomy software for the PC, Macintosh, or Palm OS systems. Items that are more "review" oriented will be posted on the Astronomy Software Reviews page. If you have any comments, suggestions, questions or answers to questions posed here, e-mail them to me and I'll post them. Please use an appropriate Subject Line on your message. Thanks.

Subject:	Starry Night Bundle, Astronomers Control Panel and 494 handbox
Sent:	Tuesday, June 29, 2004 18:34:05
From:	Mike Montana (MikeMontana@hotmail.com)
I have found a consistent problem when trying to sync my meade scope to
StarryNight via the ACP. It appears that the ACP program causes a crash
(stack overflow is my guess) on the 494. Symptoms include: Sync begins,
scope is slewing and an abortive "BEEEP!" comes from the handbox. At
this point, the scope is no longer able to GOTO a star properly, with
the RA being off by several hours.

Power cycling the Handbox, including a software reset, removal of the
batteries etc, doesnt always clear the problem. I did discover that
going to the SETUP menu, and editting the site to manually set the
Lat/Long DOES resolve this problem. Doesnt make sense, since the active
site is from ROM, but, as I suspect a stack overflow could cause
corruption in the flash-data.

Mike here: Do you have the updated ACP from their website (link on the Astronomy Links page)?

And:

Yes, in fact I have just returned from another scope-crash when using
ACP. Tonite I have installed their latest version (1.3) and the same
issue occurs. It happens specifically when I "sync scope to view", and
occasionally under other circumstances. Too bad, because I really like
"Starry Nights", and would love to use it to guide the scope (are there
alternative plugins suitable for Autostar?)

Thanks for your reply,
Mike

Mike here: There are alternative programs. I'm surprised that Starry Night even needs ACP; I don't think it needs it for their Mac OS X version (ACP is Windows only as I recall). Anyway, see the Autostar Info page for several apps for Windows and Mac OS X that work with the Autostar.

Subject:	windows XP for astro finder
Sent:	Thursday, June 3, 2004 08:00:27
From:	Cesar Romero (romerodelrio@telefonica.net)
exist version of astrofinder for windows XP?
Cesar Romero

Mike here: I don't know but there are many other choices that do work with XP (which I don't use, being a Mac OS X user).

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