the software faeries

Sorted a bug with Backyard EOS.

I should NOT say a bug. A problem, an issue. Possibly a user problem...

For the longest time I wasn't able to get the weather feed working in BYE on the netbook with a text file, even an unaltered text file from a Davis weather station. I tried many options and many settings and different files to no available. I got weird results with the software slowing and then freezing requiring a Task Manager intervention. I started thinking about it again with my recent imaging runs. So I re-raised the topic on the O'Telescope forums and Guylain responded promptly.

I performed yet another test on Backyard Nikon on John Max. It worked fine, as before. Got the same results as the developer. When I was asked to pull the log file, I fired up John Repeat Dance, tracked down the sample data file, and tried loading it. And wouldn't ya know... it worked! I could tell right away something was different as the text file select process went fine and as I entered the parsing parameters, I saw data values extracted from the file immediately showing in the dialogue! Yes!

Then I made custom text file with trusty ole Notepad and dropped a shortcut on the desktop so that I can easily update this in the future.

Temp Humidity City
+000.0 064 Bradford West Gwillimbury

The file is simple. The first line headings. This appears to be ignored by BYE. The second line is the current weather data delimited with spaces, temperature, humidity, and the location.

In Backyard, I reconfigured the settings for my custom text file:

parameter	starts at	length
city	12	25
temperature	1	6
humidity	8	3

It worked!

With good data, BYE could calculate the dew point, of course.

Magic...

No idea why it works now when it didn't before.

I apologised to Guylain.

P.S. I think I found the city parameter cannot be longer than 25 characters.

§

Update 23 Apr '21.

I have found that additional text is tolerated inside the file. The last line must have the weather data. Tested in 3.2.2. So now I have documentation and notes.