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@DanielVanNoord DanielVanNoord released this 28 Mar 15:49
· 43 commits to main since this release
v0.5.0-alpha02
7c50a1f

Release v0.5.0-alpha02 of the ASCOM Alpaca Simulators project! Primary improvements include changes to several simulated devices and improved testing for Alpaca calls. This is a test bed for the next major release of the OmniSim with significant improvements for several devices.

Note

This build does not include COM Support as it is meant to focus on new Alpaca features and simulation improvements. COM Support will be re-enabled for a future build.

Version 1.0 Preview Changes

FilterWheel, Focuser and Rotator have been completely rewritten to used a new shared driver back end. This allows easy reuse of a lot of common driver code. For example async connects now take a little time to complete, allowing async connect code to be better tested. Each of these devices now support a second simulation (this will allow a user configurable number of devices for a later release). The code for these simulated devices has been significantly cleaned up as well.

The updated devices offer a settable interface version. This enables or disables features that are available for each of the released interface versions. This allows clients to test behavior against historical versions of ASCOM devices.

They also support a JSON based API to change simulation settings for each of the updated devices. The OmniSim Swagger page now includes the specification for this API (exact commands are subject to change).

Each of the updated devices now supports independent log levels and generates a device specific log, separate from the main OmniSim log.

After this version has been tested for a while the other device types will receive the same updates.

The OmniSim generated swagger documentation has been greatly improved.

Simulation changes

  1. Major changes to FilterWheel, Focuser and Rotator
  2. Several bug and function enhancements
  3. Safety Monitor - Throws not connected on IsSafe
  4. UI Now displays all switches
  5. Camera - Improvements to sensor FOV
  6. Observing Conditions - Dew point changed to Celsius

General Improvements

  1. Fixed several UI issues and unhappy paths.
  2. Docker issues have been fixed.
  3. New command line argument --show-browser will tell the OmniSim to open the browser to the main page, this can be called at start or by calling the main OmniSim binary while a copy is already running.

The binaries can be started directly or from the command line. Either way they can display a terminal for output / testing. These releases are simple zip / tar.xz files containing the output. For each the main binary is named ascom.alpaca.simulators.

Each OS dependent package was built as a Self Contained (does not require .Net 8.0 to be installed) and Trimmed (size reduced by removing unused platform code). All targets are Ready to Run AOT Compiled (whatever code can be fully compiled was).

This release includes Windows (x86 and amd64) as part of Platform 7, Linux (amd64, armhf, and aarch64) and macOS amd64 (Intel or Rosetta 2) binaries.

The zip that ends with .Net 8.0 is a release build that is much smaller but it requires .Net 8.0 to be installed on the system. It can be unzipped and started by calling "dotnet .\ascom.alpaca.simulators.dll" or by running the exe on Windows.

Linux builds also offer experimental AppImage packages, which have AppImage in the file name.

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