Astro Coverage Planner (ACP) — NINA Plugin

NINA-side companion to Astro Coverage Planner. Pulls plans from a running ACP instance and pushes them into NINA's Framing Assistant. From there you save the framing as a sequencer target and image it however you like — Simple Sequencer, Advanced Sequencer, or just manual capture. No Target Scheduler required.

The plugin also has an optional one-click "Sync All to TS" button for users who do run Target Scheduler — no zip imports, no faff.

What it does

• Plans dock panel in the Imaging tab. Live list of every plan in your running ACP instance with project, target, per-filter integration goals, mosaic shape, and gear.
• Push to Framing Assistant. One click loads the selected target into NINA's Framing Wizard with the right coordinates, rotation, mosaic geometry (rows × cols × overlap), camera dimensions, and focal length. Save the framing as a sequencer target and you're done.
• Sync All to TS (optional). If you use Target Scheduler, this triggers ACP's bidirectional TS sync extension to push every plan into the TS database for the active NINA profile.
• Options page for the ACP server URL and behavior toggles.

Requirements

• NINA 3.1.2.9001 or newer.
• A running Astro Coverage Planner instance reachable on http://127.0.0.1:5555 (configurable in plugin options). ACP must run on the same machine as NINA for v1.x.
• For the Sync All to TS button only: ACP's private nina_ts_sync extension installed. (Without it, the rest of the plugin still works — Framing push doesn't need it.)

Installation

Manual install (until the marketplace listing lands)

1. Download ACP.NINA.Plugin-v<version>.zip from the latest release.
2. Extract the three DLLs into %localappdata%\NINA\Plugins\3.0.0\ACP.NINA.Plugin\ (create the folder if needed).
3. Restart NINA. The plugin appears under Options → Plugins → Installed.
4. Right-click the Imaging tab's panel area → add the Astro Coverage Planner dock panel to your layout.

Marketplace install (coming soon)

Once listed on NINA's plugin marketplace, you'll be able to install directly from Options → Plugins → Available.

First-time setup

1. Make sure ACP is running on the same machine. Open http://127.0.0.1:5555/ in a browser to confirm.
2. In NINA, open the ACP dock panel. The status line at the top should flip from "Probing..." to a green dot + "Connected — http://127.0.0.1:5555".
3. If you see "Not connected", open Options → Plugins → Astro Coverage Planner (ACP) and check the Server URL. Click Test to verify.

Using it

To frame a target from ACP:

1. Pick a plan from the list in the dockable.
2. Click Push to Framing.
3. Switch to the Framing Assistant view. The target's loaded with the right coordinates, mosaic, and rotation.
4. Click Set as Sequence Target (or whatever NINA calls it in your version) to send it to your sequencer.

To sync everything to Target Scheduler:

1. Make sure ACP's nina_ts_sync extension is installed.
2. In the dockable, confirm the "Will sync to profile: ..." line shows the right NINA profile (it auto-uses the active one).
3. Click Sync All to TS. Footer reports the counts (inserted / updated) once done.

Troubleshooting

• Plugin doesn't show in Installed list. Restart NINA fully — plugin DLLs are loaded once at startup and aren't hot-reloaded.
• Dock panel stays "Probing..." forever. ACP isn't reachable. Confirm the server is running (http://127.0.0.1:5555 in a browser), then click the refresh button in the dockable.
• Push to Framing loads coords but no rectangles / wrong rotation. Make sure you're on plugin v1.0.0.0 or newer — earlier builds had rendering bugs that v1.0.0.0 fixes.
• Anything else. Open an issue with the relevant chunk of %localappdata%\NINA\Logs\<latest>.log (search for ACP: to find plugin entries).

Build from source

dotnet build ACP.NINA.Plugin.sln -c Release

Debug builds auto-deploy to %localappdata%\NINA\Plugins\3.0.0\ACP.NINA.Plugin\ via a post-build xcopy. Restart NINA to pick up changes. See RELEASING.md for the full release process.

License

MIT — see LICENSE.txt.