Freeware from New Astronomy Press
Program author: Ron Wodaski
No rights reserved. You are free to use this program as you wish.
The STV outputs the current X,Y coordinates of the guide star during tracking. STV Snoop listens on the COM port you select
for this information, and captures it for you. You can copy the tracking info to the clipboard, or you can save it to
your hard disk for analysis.
Installing STV Snoop
Copy the files from the ZIP archive to an empty folder. Double click on setup.exe and follow the on-screen instructions to complete the installation.
Running STV Snoop
1. Use the File | Listen to STV menu item to open the COM port and start listening for data from the STV. If Auto record on connect is checked, and if the COM port and baud rate are correct, data will start showing up in the white box. Be sure to check for the correct COM port and baud rate before you connect. Try starting out with the baud rate set to 115200 (this is the default).
2. If Auto Record on connect is not checked, verify COM port and baud rate, then click the Record button. [Note: If Auto clear on record is checked, any existing data is cleared before the recording starts.]
Incoming data looks like this, with three columns (star brightness, X, Y):
13380,220.03,226.31
13391,220.33,226.19
13622,220.34,226.11
13520,220.33,226.03
13646,220.35,225.96
13586,220.20,226.15
13493,220.43,225.97
13616,220.01,226.20
Note: If you haven't upgraded to the latest firmware (version 1.04), you might not see the star brightness column:
174.35,278.76
172.26,279.84
173.99,279.17
174.14,279.05
174.20,278.93
174.39,278.84
174.30,278.78
These are X and Y coordinates for the guide star. These coordinates are for the actual position on the chip, not the position in the little guide window. Tip: save the data to your hard disk and open the file in Excel to make a graph of the data.
3. Click the Pause button to stop recording data. If Auto copy to clipboard on pause is checked, you can paste the data into Notepad or other programs immediately. If that is not checked, then use the Edit | Copy to Clipboard menu item.
4. To manually clear the data, click the Clear button.
5. To save to disk, use the File | Save As menu item. Navigate to the folder where you want to save the data, type in a filename (the default is STV Ouput.txt), and click Save.
6. To stop listening on the COM port, use the File | Close COM Port menu item.
To close the program, use the File | Exit menu item.
Report bugs and make suggestions via email.