New full platform installer. Removes the need to install Platform 5 and then the 5.5 update.
Driver installers that did not run in locale's where "." is not the decimal separator will now run.
Incorrectly registered drivers are now identified by the Chooser and report why rather than
generating difficult to assess exception messages.
32bit only drivers will now be identified by the Chooser if selected by a 64bit application and an appropriate
message will be given.
Flexibility - Capability for driver authors to implement their own commands (Action and SupportedActions methods)
Supported Device Types
New SafetyDevice device definition
New CameraV2 device definition
All device types now support a common set of core capabilities
Action - Execute a device specific capability defined by the driver author
CommandBlind - Send a device specific control code to a device expecting no response
CommandBool - Send a device specific control code to a device expecting a boolean response
CommandString - Send a device specific control code to a device expecting a string response
Connected - connects and disconnects the controlled device
Description - Long description of the device being controlled
Dispose - Clean up and release any driver resources prior to driver shutdown
DriverInfo - Long description of the driver controlling the device
DriverVersion - m.n format driver version number
InterfaceVersion - Version number of the ASCOM interface that the driver supports
Name - Short display name of the driver
SetupDialog - DIsplays the driver / device configuration screen
SupportedActions - List of actions supported by this device
New simulators authored in .NET, compatible with 32 and 64bit operating systems.
Enhanced Profile Explorer with right click features in both left and right hand panes
Tool to tell you when updated components are available (Not in current build)
New full implementation of the USNO NOVAS3 library.
Improved recognition of serial ports and the ability to hide specific ports from the available list if required.
Device Interface version numbers have been increased by 1 to reflect introduction of the common core capabilities
Separate developer tool installer, that can be updated independently of the core platform, allowing development tools
to be continuously improved without requiring platform users to install updated platform versions.
Key Changes in 6.0 - For Developers
Enhanced Client Toolkit that transparently handles Platform 5 and Platform 6 conformant drivers
providing a consistent interface for .NET application developers.
Enhanced version of Conform to confirm adherence to the new Platform 6 interfaces
Driver Templates - New templates updated for Platform 6 and creating multi-instance drivers
Compensation for movement of the CIO in RA using supplied NOVAS data
The AE98 readeph routine to parse locally held minor planet ephemeris files.
ASCOM Controls - reusable components that can be embedded in forms to ease development of common tasks
LED Indicator - a simple red / green indicator supporting various blink cadences
Annunciator - Displays status with a standard look and feel
Separate developer components installer
TraceLogger - Has a new menu option to return the full path name of the log file being created.
TraceLogger - New LogMessageCrLf method that respects carriage returns and line feeds in
messages and doesn't translate these to hex display characters.
Profile - Has four new methods to retrieve and set all values in a device
profile in one operation. GetProfileXML and SetProfileXML work with an XML encoding of the profile
while GetProfile and SetProfile work with a new ASCOMProfile object that contains all
entries in the profile and provides simple methods to read and set values.
Additional logging for serial component accesed through DriverHelper.Serial.
Serial - Now has an RTSEnable property to control whether RTS is asserted when using
RTS/CTS hardware handshaking.
Conform - An updated version that supports both Platform 5 and Platfom 6 drivers is available as a
separate download. Conform is no longer distributed through the Platform itself so that it can be updated
regularly without requiring a full Platform update
Issues Fixed
Installer - Now applies required security attributes every time the installer is run,
regardless of whether the profile is already migrated. This ensures correct attributes are applied
for early adopters whose profile was migrated by an early "HelperNET" install.
MigrateProfile - Now applies the "Full Control" security attribute to the entire ASCOM shared
file area where the Profile is stored to remove access control issues seen by some people.
NOVAS2 - sun_eph is now accesible.
Profile - Improved resilience to transient operational issues
Profile - Improved recovery from profile file corruption
Profile - Fixed exception thrown when a calling application has no version number of any kind
Profile - AbandonedMutexExceptions are now suppressed because they indicate issues in already terminated threads
and not in the thread that receives the exception. Previous behaviour can be enabled for testing through a Trace menu option
Serial - Some installed COM ports were not returned by Serial.AvailableCOMPorts. This has been
improved to actively test for COM ports rather than simply relying on the list of ports returned by the .NET Framework.
ShowPlatformVersion - Fixed failure when run on a 64bit OS
Timer - Now works consistently in console environments as well as windowed environments.
TraceLogger - Fixed exception thrown if object was disposed while writing
TraceLogger - Fixed low probability IOException thrown when creating the object
if multiple traceloggers were created simultaneously in multi-threaded applications.
Policy Changes (For Developers)
Support for COM early binding, introduced in Platform 5, has been frozen to ease on-going platform development.
The Current level of support will be retained for compatibility, but clients and drivers developed for Platform 6 and
later should only use late bound COM binding.
Breaking Changes (For Developers)
RegisteredDevices(ByVal DeviceType As String) has been changed from a property to a method to maximise
compatibility between .NET programming languages.
Key Changes in 6.0 - For Everyone