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ASCOM .net Developer Framework

The ASCOM .net Developer Framework is a set of native .net assemblies that simplify ASCOM development using the .net languages. One of the difficulties is that the .net languages do not really support late-binding very well, but ASCOM requires late binding. It is specifically forbidden to set a reference on an ASCOM driver from within Visual Studio.

The .net languages do support creating late-bound objects but it is quite tricky and the IntelliSense features in Visual Studio are not available.

The ASCOM .net Developer Framework simplifies things in the following ways:

• Defines interfaces for all of the ASCOM specifications (and some additional ones) and allows the application developer to program against an Interface, rather than a late-bound component. This helps to avoid dependence on a specific driver.
• Implements a set of wrapper classes, exceptions and events that hide the complexity of using late-bound components and COM Interop.
• Provides a collection of controls that can be used in Windows Forms applications (for example, a Chooser control).
• Adds diagnostic tracing to all legacy ASCOM drivers, with diagnostic information going to the Output window in Visual Studio.

The ASCOM .net Developer Framework is free, open-source and fully documented. Documentation is available online, here. Although the documentation looks complex, this is for the sake of completeness only and using the framework is actually very simple. Please see the QuickStart Tutorial for more information.

The ASCOM .net Developer Framework is a work in progress. Currently, Dome and Telescope (V1) drivers are supported. Other device classes will be added over time.