ASCOM Remote - Version 1.6.7360.22073

Highlights and Dependencies

The installer is located in the "Assets" section at the end of these release notes

• This release requires ASCOM Platform 6.5

The Platform 6.5 Chooser can now discover and create drivers for devices presented by the Remote Server.

Cover calibrator devices and IRotatorV3 rotators introduced in Platform 6.5 are supported by the Remote Server.

Performance of Camera.ImageArray when handling large images has been significantly improved.

Documentation

• ASCOM Remote Concept: ASCOM Distributed Architecture - background and conceptual diagrams.
• Installation: ASCOM Remote Documentation - how to install and configure ASCOM Remote.
• ASCOM Alpaca API (for developers): ASCOM Alpaca API Reference - how to use and implement the API.
• Alpaca Discovery Protocol (for developers): Alpaca Discovery - how to implement Alpaca Discovery.

Changes

• The Remote Server supports the Alpaca discovery protocol.
  • This is enabled by default and can be turned off through the configuration dialogue.
• Camera.ImageArray performs significantly faster and uses less memory.
  • The faster mechanic is enabled by default and can be disabled through the Camera client setup dialogue.
• The Remote Server has improved support for multi-threaded drivers.
  • Commands are now forwarded to a driver immediately on receipt, enabling the driver to decide when to process them. Previously, commands were serialised and sent to the driver one at a time.
  • The new concurrent behaviour is enabled by default, but the previous synchronous behaviour can be restored through the Remote Server setup dialogue if required.
• Added support for CoverCalibrator devices
• Added support for rotators that implement the IRotatorV3 interface
• The Remote Server can now handle up to 100 devices
• The Remote Server has CORS support.
• Configuration storage and retrieval is more robust if it encounters corrupt values.
• The installation and configuration document has been extensively updated.

Issues Fixed

• Form parameter parsing has been made more robust.
• Permissions are now correctly set for user's whose accounts don't have admin privilege and who use a different Admin account name to authorise configuration changes.
• The Start menu ASCOM Remote documentation link now works correctly.
• A rare un-handled application exception when closing the Remote Server has been fixed.
• The Setup button now works correctly with early Focuser drivers that implement IFocuserV1

ASCOM Remote v1.5.2

The installer is located in the "Assets" section at the end of these release notes

Documentation

• ASCOM Remote Concept: ASCOM Distributed Architecture - background and conceptual diagrams.
• Installation: ASCOM Remote Documentation - how to install and configure ASCOM Remote.
• ASCOM Alpaca API (for developers): ASCOM Alpaca API Reference - how to use and implement the API.

Changes

• The Remote Server now handles drivers more gracefully when they don't initialise correctly.
• The inbound firewall rule now supports edge traversal.
• Remote clients now include retry logic to deal with transient networking issues
• Implemented a more flexible approach to extracting the image array type and rank from the JSON response.
• The Alpaca management HTML and JSON APIs have been implemented in line with the Alpaca standard.

Issues Fixed

• Firewall rules are now correctly applied for the Remote Server.
• SetNetworkRules will now work when .NET 4.6 is installed but .NET 4.7 is not.
• Parameter handling has been revised to be consistent with the API specification. Now, query parameters will only be honoured on HTTP GET operations and Body parameters will only be honoured on HTTP PUT operations. Previously, query parameters were accepted for PUT operations and merged with any parameters supplied in the body.
• The installer now installs the SetNetworkPermissions exe and support files if the user just selects the Remote Clients for install and does not select the Remote Server option.

ASCOM Remote v1.5.1

The installer is located in the "Assets" section at the end of these release notes

Documentation

• ASCOM Remote Concept: ASCOM Distributed Architecture - background and conceptual diagrams.
• Installation: ASCOM Remote Documentation - how to install and configure ASCOM Remote.
• ASCOM Alpaca API (for developers): ASCOM Alpaca API Reference - how to use and implement the API.

Breaking Changes

• As of version 1.5.0, URLs are case sensitive in line with the revised Alpaca API definition
  • This will only be of concern if you have created your own Alpaca client and are issuing mixed case URLs or you are testing with a browser and are reusing mixed case URLs that were permitted in earlier versions.
• The Remote Server executable has been renamed from ASCOM.RESTServer.exe to ASCOM.RemoteServer.exe for consistency with documentation and general usage.
  • The impact is that any desktop shortcuts or script references that you have created will no longer find the Remote Server executable, these will need to be updated to use the new executable name.

Other Changes

• IP addresses and host names are now validated on Remote Client Setup dialogues, preventing incorrect values from being entered.
• The Remote Server will now log messages indicating whether or not each configured device initialised correctly.
• Naming of Start menu shortcuts has been made consistent

Issues Fixed

• Remote clients will no longer fail if unsupported device types are present in the ASCOM Profile.
• Error messages with HTTP status 400 now display the returned message instead of the error status header description
• The Remote Server will now prevent devices being used when drivers do not initialise correctly.
• Firewall rules for the Remote Server are now set correctly
• Documentation
  • Correct HTTP parameter separator character from "," to "&" in several places.
  • Correct Client and ClientTransaction parameter names to ClientID and ClientTransactionID in two places.

ASCOM Remote v1.5

Documentation

• ASCOM Remote Concept: ASCOM Distributed Architecture - background and conceptual diagrams.
• Installation: ASCOM Remote Documentation - how to install and configure ASCOM Remote.
• ASCOM Alpaca API (for developers): ASCOM Alpaca API Reference - how to use and implement the API.

Changes

• ASCOM Remote now uses the revised Alpaca API specification:
  • The Reserved Alpaca error numbers (0x400 to 0xFFF) are supported when handling ASCOM exceptions.
  • ClientID, ClientTransactionID and ServerTransactionID are now handled as unsigned 32bit integers.
  • The redundant and unused "Method" response field has been removed.
  • The Remote server will no longer send the Windows specific DriverException response field by default so that it is fully Alpaca compliant. However, this can be enabled to support client and driver development if required.
  • URLs are now treated case sensitively. Remote Client requests are sent in lower case and the Remote Server will reject all URLs that are not completely lower case.
• Client IP addresses can now be included in the Remote Server log
• ClientIDs that are auto generated by Remote Clients have been reduced to the range 1::65536 so that they fit better in the allocated log space.
• The Remote Server now logs all supplied parameters when debug tracing is enabled.
• The Alpaca API documentation has been updated and extended.
• The JSON name of the variable that holds the returned Telescope.TrackingRates collection has been changed from "Rates" to "Value" for consistency with all other responses.

Issues Fixed

• A few inconsistencies between the ASCOM API Specification and it's representation in the Alpaca API on the ASCOM Standards web site have been fixed. The Alpaca API now correctly reflects the ASCOM API Specification.
• ASCOM Remote will now work correctly in locale's where characters other than point are used as the decimal separator.
• The unusable grey'd out Remote Configuration button has been removed from the Remote Client Setup.

Notes - Upgrading from Version 1.0

• The remote client ProgIDs have changed to reflect the new ASCOM Remote branding, which means that you will need to "re Choose" the remote client applications although the upgrade process will preserve existing settings. The drivers now appear as ASCOM Remote Client 1, 2, 3 etc. in the Chooser.
• There is a new "Remote Client Configuration" utility in the ASCOM Remote folder with which you can control how many remote client drivers of each device type are available.

ASCOM Remote v1.4

Documentation

• ASCOM Remote Concept: ASCOM Distributed Architecture - background and conceptual diagrams.
• Installation: ASCOM Remote Documentation - how to install and configure ASCOM Remote.
• ASCOM Remote API (for developers): ASCOM REST API - how to use the API from applications.

Changes

• The documentation has been brought up to date and revised for greater clarity
• The Nu-get components have been updated to the latest releases
• The Remote Server can now be configured with a wild card IP address so that it will listen on all available interfaces

Issues Fixed

The Remote Clients now handle errors from non-Windows drivers correctly

Notes - Upgrading from Version 1.0

• The remote client ProgIDs have changed to reflect the new ASCOM Remote branding, which means that you will need to "re Choose" the remote client applications although the upgrade process will preserve existing settings. The drivers now appear as ASCOM Remote Client 1, 2, 3 etc. in the Chooser.
• There is a new "Remote Client Configuration" utility in the ASCOM Remote folder with which you can control how many remote client drivers of each device type are available.

ASCOM Remote v1.3

Documentation

• ASCOM Remote Concept: ASCOM Distributed Architecture - background and conceptual diagrams.
• Installation: ASCOM Remote Documentation - how to install and configure ASCOM Remote.
• ASCOM Remote API (for developers): ASCOM REST API - how to use the API from applications.

Issues Fixed

• The Switch.SetSwitch, Switch.SetSwitchValue and Switch.SetSwitchName methods now call the driver with the SwitchIndex parameter as the correct Int16 (short) type instead of Int32.

Notes - Upgrading from Version 1.0

• The remote client ProgIDs have changed to reflect the new ASCOM Remote branding, which means that you will need to "re Choose" the remote client applications although the upgrade process will preserve existing settings. The drivers now appear as ASCOM Remote Client 1, 2, 3 etc. in the Chooser.
• There is a new "Remote Client Configuration" utility in the ASCOM Remote folder with which you can control how many remote client drivers of each device type are available.

ASCOM Remote v1.2

Issues fixed

• The Remote Server status display locked up when displaying huge responses from Camera.ImageArray.
• Remote Server logging failed at the midnight log change over when drivers were running in separate threads

Changes

• Swagger and API Definition Files
  • The Swagger code for displaying the API at https://www.ascom-standards.org/api has been up leveled to the current Swagger release enabling the "Try it out" feature.
  • The API definition files have been changed to the OpenAPI 3.0.0 format
  • The API commands can now be tried out at https://virtserver.swaggerhub.com/ASCOMInitiative/ASCOMDeviceAPI/1.0.0-oas3/ e.g. https://virtserver.swaggerhub.com/ASCOMInitiative/ASCOMDeviceAPI/1.0.0-oas3/Telescope/0/Connected?ClientID=1&ClientTransactionID=1234

ASCOM Remote v1.1

Key features in this release:

• Improved user interface
• Each driver can now can run in its own thread complete with a full Windows message loop to increase driver isolation and overall stability
• Ability to enable and disable the REST server for the UI
• Ability to load and unload the drivers from the UI
• Re-branded to ASCOM Remote
• The number of Remote Client drivers can now be configured on demand through a new utility in the Start menu.
• Improved resilience if a bad IP address is configured.

Please note

• The remote client ProgIDs have changed to reflect the new branding which means that users of earlier versions will need to "re Choose" the remote client applications although the upgrade process will preserve existing settings.

ASCOM Remote Device Clients and Server v1.0.1

This release fixes an installer bug that prevented installation on machines whose locale did not use point as the decimal separator.

ASCOM Remote Device Clients and Server v1.0

This release adds automated firewall setup to the installer to remove the need to set this up manually.