I notice version 5.5 is on the Meade website for download but helpfully it doesn't say what has changed. Does anyone know?

Stewart

Hi, Stewart - do you happen to know when this went up? I would have expected this to be the DSI-III release (which has been available for some months now), but maybe they have done another one that I'm not aware of.

Chuck

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Chuck Reese
CDIP Certified: Nebula, Galaxy, Solar System, Stars & Clusters Imager
CDIP Mentor: Nebulae & Solar System Categories
For information on the Certified DSI Imager Program, see:
http://autostarsuite.net/forums/1427/ShowForum.aspx

I posted about this on a couple of Yahoo groups and I got the impression this v5.5 release has only been out for a couple weeks at most.

This thread got the biggest response...

http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/autostarsuite/message/13238

Most of it is incidental banter and me carping about getting my LPI to work (which I never did, btw). but here's a quote from one of my posts about my upgrade experience. Keep in mind I wasn't in a good mood when I wrote it and haven't done an extensive examination of v5.5.

quote...

"I suppose updating the computer wasn't entirely a waste but truth be told the
Autostarsuite upgrade was not worth the trouble, to me anyway. Other than
cosmetic changes to the Remote Handbox I haven't noticed anything functionally
different from v3.23. Maybe if the new PEC Tool works I'll play with that. Oh,
and the documentation for ASIP is much better but I moved on to other processing
programs long ago so that's a day late and a dollar short.

Envisage v7.xx has a couple of nifty new features like the 3D Magic Eye focus
widget and the 'fit to window' checkbox, but the fact that I have to resize the
program window on every startup is maddenly tedious. But here too, I moved on to
Nebulosity for capture some time ago.

Unless you have one of the newer products that needs v5.5 there's not much
reason to upgrade from v3.23 and v5.85...IMO."

...end quote

Not much to add...The planetarium now has a button to fetch DSS images from the internet, the download includes a .Net 2.0 upgrade (there is a .Net 3.5 update available from Microsoft). Aside from the trials and tribulations I put myself through the upgrade was straightforward and went smooth. But the fact remains I pretty much feel like I'm back where I started.

...........Mike

http://autostarsuite.net/photos/mike7mak/

LX200gps 7" Mak
Takahashi FS78
DSIpro, DSIpro2
41deg 50' N
73deg 44' W

I notice Envisage now reports itself as 7.06.
Was wondering if the bugs reported here might be fixed, sepecially the Program Crashing issue which stops me from using 7.05:
http://autostarsuite.net/forums/thread/18022.aspx

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Dave Cheeseman
Milton Keynes, UK
Meade LX90 8"
Meade DSI-C

Hmmm, I wonder how "new" this update is, I bought my dsi-3 color camera back in December and I think it already had this version of autostar suite and envisage.  Do I need to update anything?  Im happy with the way everything works and I dont want any updates to mess things up.

This will teach me for asking in the first place... I now have a dedicated laptop for my observatory (shed!) and made a clean install of xp sp2 and the various astro software I use (PhD, K3CCD, etc.) I downloaded autostar 5.5 and envisage 7.05 from Meade, rather than use my ancient CD and was looking forward to my lpi bursting into life again as my other laptop is vista. However, Envisage will not start, either on its own or via the autostar menu. It immediately gives an application error.

Has anyone else seen this- is it just the web download or is something interfering? I have McAfee software but no office or other software on the laptop.  I may try installing from CD and upgrading to 7.05 but wondered if anyone knows this problem. I did not have the lpi attached at the time- does that matter, it never used to.

Stewart

Stewart,

I have no idea if this could be the problem but...

There were two Autostarsuite downloads available, one was AS 5.0, came with Envisage 7.05, and was 80 Mbs. The other more recent one located here...

http://www.meade.com/support/downloads.html

...is AS 5.5 and has Envisage 7.06 AND a dot.NET 2.0 Micosoft update and is 214 Mbs. Dot.NET is actually up to 3.5 I think, available from the Microsoft site.

I suspect having at least dot.NET 2.0 is essential to proper functioning of the latest Autostarsuite.
 
...........Mike

http://autostarsuite.net/photos/mike7mak/

LX200gps 7" Mak
Takahashi FS78
DSIpro, DSIpro2
41deg 50' N
73deg 44' W

Yes, you need at least 2.0 (the current version, 3.x works fine too).

And you do have to connect the camera before launching Envisage.

You are supposed to leave the camera unconnected during install, until prompted to connect by the software. If you did not do that, you may need to uninstall, reboot, and reinstall correctly to resolve the problem.

HTH,

Chuck

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Chuck Reese
CDIP Certified: Nebula, Galaxy, Solar System, Stars & Clusters Imager
CDIP Mentor: Nebulae & Solar System Categories
For information on the Certified DSI Imager Program, see:
http://autostarsuite.net/forums/1427/ShowForum.aspx

Thanks Chuck and Mike,

I installed .net 3.5 and it burst into life. Many thanks for the quick fix.

Stewart