A wasted night here. No problems with last version two nights ago. The new version states “Solver catalog paths are broken” for Platesolve2 to work. After reselecting the directories within PlateSole2 configuration both catalogs show green “status ok”. I moved the star catalogs to a new location, since my initial attempt failed. Reconfigured for the new location, status ok, but SGP still fails on all attempts to plate solve (centering action or random point and solve).
Frustrated here, especially since the former versions have worked well and I’m loosing a night of imaging.
Dan Bartlett
Being blindsided by this one is no fun. I never go to the SGP website unless an issue with the program has occurred (as in this case caused by an update). I wouldn’t expect a software company to have a pop-up notice with a click download and install button, directly from the program itself, and not have the software seamlessly work (with improvements) as it has before. Referring to the website’s - this is what you are now receiving but you’ll have to do - attitude doesn’t work for me especially with the prospects of needing the software on the spot.
Platesolve 2.xx still isn’t working for me despite the new downloads and new installation. ASTAP does work. With my limited knowledge on computer code - one more thing to learn - I now need to switch each one of my plate solving routines in the equipment profile manager over to the new program ASTAP. What a headache.
No more updates from SGP for me. I’ve been a loyal user since 2017.
Dan
We can certainly help if you’d like to provide additional information.
Totally up to you. We barely ever make changes like this… it would be a shame to let this experience prevent you from experiencing any new functionality in the future.
What would be incredibly helpful is if you guys sent a notification out beforehand, alerting your loyal users to these major changes, so that we can decide when to update. That way, we don’t get stuck trying to find and figure all of this out on a clear, moonless night. Quite frankly, I think our loyalty should warrant greater concern.
You’re not really providing enough details for us to help you, but it’s not different than any other Windows
program and can be uninstalled in the same manner as any other Windows app.
After you uninstall, you have your choice of previous releases here:
If you intend to continue using SGPro, we suggest that you work through the install of the PlateSolve plate solver which we can absolutely assist with. You may even be interested in using PlateSolve3
Here are before and after screenshots. I completed the steps as outlined in the workflow; however, this error popped up each time I opened SGP or attempted to start a sequence. I spent an hour or so running through the process to no avail. These shots were my last attempt. Afterwords, I uninstalled the update and reinstalled the November release.
Hm, OK, thanks for the info. I’ll take a look and see if I can reproduce any kind of similar issue here. I don’t see anything immediately wrong with your setup and I’m wondering if there may be an issue where the new PlateSolve2 wrapper config is conflicting with the old. I’ll report back shortly.
In trying to wok through this, I downloaded the new version of Platesolve from the forum link in a few different folders. I thought that I may have had a conflict as well. This last attempt was in a new folder that was created and directly linked to.
Alright… it took a moment, but I was able to trace what is happening. The issue here is that the Program Files directory in windows is very secure. Apps are not really allowed to touch anything in that folder. Because I knew that PlateSolve writes its config file to the same folder that PlateSolve2.exe exists in, we have literally never attempted to place PlateSolve2 in ProgramFiles just assuming that it would fail to write its config file in this secure area.
Here is what I have just learned: if you install PlateSolve2 in ANY location except Program FIles (or its x86 brother), PlateSolve2 will write its catalog config file to the same folder as PlateSolve2.exe and, more importantly, SGPro will be able to find it.
If you install PlateSolve2 in your Program Files folder, it seems PlateSolve2 contains special logic to understand this and, instead of failing, it will just write the config file out to an unprotected area and SGPro, in its current state, will not be able to find it.
The summary:
I will modify SGPro to be able to find PlateSolve2 catalog configs in either location, but I need to do a little more research
If you want it to work immediately, install (and point) to a non-secure location (like your Documents folder)
Install PlateSolve3 which does not have this issue.
I too had the messages that the links to the Platesolve2 catalogs were missing. Reconnecting the links did not help, even with the most recent “fix”. I found that the link to the external Platesolve2 application was lost after the update. After resetting that - Tools/Options, External Apps (right tab) - to the location of the PlateSolve2 executive on my computer, it now works.
