ASCOM Platform 7 - Release Candidate 7

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

Operating System Compatibility

Following discovery of issues when installing Platform 7 on some Windows 7 systems, the decision has been made to restrict Platform 7 to Windows 10 build 1809 (October 2018) and later operating systems. For context, Windows 7 is now 15 years old and Microsoft withdrew support for this operating system over four years ago in January 2020.

Platform 6.6 SP2 is the latest Platform release for those who prefer to stay with Windows 7, and continues to provide good access to both COM drivers and Alpaca devices.

Release Candidate 7 Changes from Release Candidate 5

• Alpaca Dynamic Clients
  • The SetupDialog method now provides access to the Alpaca device's setup HTML pages when connected. Previously these were only available when the device was not connected.
  • Fixed a bug that prevented Dynamic Clients from being created on some systems
• Help - The descriptions of SideOfPier and DestinationSideOfPier have been made consistent across the Master Interface Document, the Platform and the ASCOM Library. The functional performance requirements of these methods have not changed.
• The COM Telescope and Camera simulators now default to the Platform 7 behaviour rather than Platform 6 behaviour.
• Diagnostics - Fixed a long standing bug that could report an Issue on some systems when registry keys could not be read.
• Update Checker
  • Fixed a localisation bug that prevented installation in locale's where the Local Users security group is not spelled "Users".
  • The update check will now run at logon as well as weekly.

Release Candidate 5 Changes from Release Candidate 4

• Alpaca Dynamic Clients - The configured remote device number is now used instead of always defaulting to device 0.
• A problem encountered when uninstalling the Platform 6 developer tools will no longer prevent Platform 7 installation.
• Telescope Simulator - The simulator now honours the configuration option to disable tracking rates.
• Camera Hub - Now displays the configured device ProgID on the Setup page.
• Driver Template - The default namespace has been changed to ASCOM.LocalServer to avoid a name conflict when VS settings are used.

Release Candidate 4 Changes from Release Candidate 3

• Help - The link to the platform neutral Master Interface document is much more prominent.
• Help - Revised the supported OS description.
• Platform update checker - Fixed exception on Windows 7 when updating or uninstalling the Platform.
• Project templates - Added check for Platform 7 or later. (The update is available through VS extension management)

Release Candidate 3 Changes from Release Candidate 2

• Fixed DriverAccess.Telescope not correctly identifying the device's Platform 7 capabilities.
• Astrometry.Transform - Reverted DecJ2000 property name to DECJ2000 to ensure backward compatibility
• ASCOMRemote - Fixed inability to change the active network interface.

Release Candidate 2 Changes from Release Candidate 1

• Fixes a backward compatibility issue where drivers that use Platform 5 or 5.5 components fail with assembly not found exceptions.

Platform 7 Highlights and Dependencies

This release focuses on the asynchronous behaviour interface changes agreed in the consultation held between July and October 2023.

Use of asynchronous programming techniques improves the end user experience by ensuring that user interfaces remain responsive while long-running operations are underway. Their use also speeds up tasks by enabling operations to be run concurrently rather than serially.

The release implements the consultation post-feedback interface changes and is backward compatible with Platform 6 and earlier clients, drivers and Alpaca devices.

The Platform requires the following Windows and .NET versions:

• Windows 7 SP1 or later
• .NET 3.5 to be installed (Windows 7 and 8 only. .NET 3.5 will be activated automatically on Windows 10 and 11.)
• .NET 4.8 to be installed

Changes for Everyone in Platform 7

• Simplified Start menu
• The default log file location can be customised to something other than Documents\ASCOM.
• Focus on technical changes to improve performance and application usability.
• Updated user guide that includes Alpaca.
• ASCOM Remote and the ASCOM Omni-simulators are now installed as part of the Platform and do not have to be downloaded and installed separately.
• The Omni-Simulators are now the default Platform simulators.
• A Camera Hub has been added to enable 32bit camera drivers to be used by 64bit applications.
• An alert will be generated when a new Platform version is released.
• The Platform installer is more resilient and reliable.

Platform Issues fixed in Platform 7

• The installer no longer displays a successful install message when an error occurs

Changes for Developers in Platform 7

• The developer components are now included with the main installer and no longer need to be installed separately.
• A new DeviceState property for all interfaces that returns the entire device operational state in a single call.
• New asynchronous Connect and Disconnect methods for all interfaces.
• New asynchronous methods and API clarifications.
• The "How to make an ASCOM driver" document has been completely re-written to document the current process.
• New platform-neutral online documentation: ascom-standards.org/newdocs
• Increased documentation clarity on where asynchronous operation is expected
• DriverAccess now has convenience methods to retrieve device state in a single call.
• The driver templates have been updated to support Platform 7 interface changes.
• SOFA has been updated to release 19 as issued on 11th October 2023.
• Please note that Platform 6 versions of Conform are incompatible with Platform 7 and a warning is issued by the Platform installer to this effect. An updated Platform 7 compatible version is available on GitHub.
• Interface version numbers have all increased by 1.

Development Issues fixed in Platform 7

• NOVASCOM – Fixed error in Sun Ephemeris calculation introduced when the Code was transcribed from C++ in 2009.
• Driver template – Fixed issue in Focuser Link code that resulted in an out of the box Conform fail.
• Fixed issue in NOVAS 3.1 component where the ephemeris file may not have been closed on DLL unload.
• The installer now pre-populates historic leap second data so that AstroUtils.DeltaUT1 works out of the box when there has been no earth rotation data update.
• Fixed a bug introduced in Platform 6.6 SP2 where a DriverException was returned instead of more specialised exceptions like InvalidValueException.

Installer SHAs

• SHA256: 95baab163eaf8c22165f9b442bd21d1fe99214b6c77e660d331f67286c47075a
• SHA1: fdf9617ad1e94713b20add79076507cd1d9f7fa0