[amsat-bb] Software ?

[Dan Cross]

Step 1: Install Linux.  Just kidding!  (Kinda.)  I'm only (half) joking.

But seriously...I do think there's a solution to your problem: you said
there was example code using Delphi? I agree that that's more or less on
the wane (to put it mildly), but there does exist a free Pascal compiler
that implements most of the functionality, without tying you to a specific
vendor.  Check out http://www.freepascal.org; it may just do what you need
it to do.


On Wed, Feb 18, 2015 at 2:49 PM, PA3GUO <pa3guo at upcmail.nl> wrote:

> Last December I got myself a new PC, with the ambition to upgrade all old
> HW & SW to the latest standards. Currently the OS is Windows 8.1, and I am
> planning to switch (for free) to Windows 10 by the end of this year.
>
> Almost all software is migrated from the old PCs to the new computer - it
> all went smooth (and runs faster now). Almost all: I still have on an old
> Windows2000 PC the software running that controls my antennas. This
> software is all Pascal, and under Windows2000 you could still directly
> write to serial ports. That changed as of Windows XP.
>
> In the new setup SATPC32 is the central software for satellite tracking
> (position & doppler). Kenwood TS2000 as well as eg SDR# are connected just
> fine.
> So… the only thing to be done is hooking up SATPC32 to my rotor controller
> (http://pa3guo.com/zb_rtr_ctrl.html).
>
> Of course my rotor controller doesnt talk any of the standard interface
> protocols, so I cannot use the default set of outputs of SATPC32. Basically
> I just need to read from the SATPC32 DDE the string that includes the
> azimuth & etc, do a minor edit to it and send it to a USB COM port.
> Fortunately SATPC32 comes with example code for this (Delfi and VB).
> Unfortunately, Delfi (replaces Pascal) is an outdated standard, and so I
> opted for the VB example.
>
> Now, the Visual Basic IDE doesn't really exist anymore. Microsoft has now
> Visual Studio Express, which is impressive btw. Issue though is, the
> included SATPC32 VB examples use DDE constructs that were supported in the
> VB IDE , but are not in Visual Studio anymore. So what I *could* do is hack
> the VB example to make it work in Visual Studio, but it seems not that
> straightforward. To add to this: SDR# is C# and talks to SATPC32's DDE. So
> C# must be DDE capable, but I haven’t seen simple example code for that
> either.
>
> In short: I just need to read from the DDE , do a minor processing on the
> string (kind of convert degrees into integer + offset) and send the result
> to a com port.
>
> How would you do this ?
> Do you program in C# or Visual Basic ?
> In case of Visual Basic, do you use Visual Studio Express ?
>
> Thanks,
> Henk - PA3GUO
>
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