EleAge

This is the ultimate lite-ware utility. It does NOTHING but tell you the age of the most recent set of elements in a particular file or folder.

You can click on any part of the form (other then the title bar and command buttons) and launch your favorite Tracking Program.

If you wish to see the newest element set press "View Element Set" and:

If you push setup you get this screen:

Click the Select button, select an element file.

You can launch your favorite tracking program if you enter it into the "Tracking Program" area.

Set the multifile display to sort the results by name, number of element sets or age of element sets in either ascending or descending order.

If you only wish to check ONE file don't place any check marks in the next section. However, if you wish to check all TXT, DAT, TLE, or NEW files (files with those file extensions), place a check mark in the box beside the type you wish to check. You can select more than one type. If you do this then this screen:

Will be presented.

Clicking on the column headers (Filename, Num of Elsets, Age of Elsets) will sort the results by that field. Click the same field again and the sort order will be reversed.

You can click on the "Show Most Recent ElSet" and display that element set for each file. If you are searching through multiple files the simple dialog box at the top will NOT display. This one will show up in its place.

Back to the setup screen ...

Next you should set the age when you want to be alerted.

Finally, set the offset from UTC to your location. This is assuming you set your system time to local. If you keep your system running on UTC, set 0 (zero) as the UTC offset.

When you press Save, the info is saved to the EleAge folder in "eleage.ini". Each time you start the program after that, the INI file info will be used.

The program opens the element file (must be a fairly straightforward 2 line element file). It adjusts itself to compare the time and date of the element sets to the current UTC time. It keeps track of the most recent set. When it's run through the file it pops up the either the single file display at the top of this page or the multi file display.

However, you could do all that by just opening the file in Element Manager so, what good is this program?

You can create a shortcut for the file and add "/silent" after the target filename in the shortcut dialog box. Then when you click on this shortcut, the program will only display the notification if the most recent element set is Older than the age at which you wished to be alerted. Otherwise, the program notes your element sets are up to date and it just exits displaying nothing.

A note here, if you have selected the "/silent" option from the command line the program MUST have a target file indicated on the setup screen to search. And, even if you have the program set to search multiple files when started normally, "/silent" will only check that single file. So, you can run the program normally looking at multiple files but have it only check a single file in the command line "/silent" mode.

The advantage here, you can drop this shortcut into the [Start/Programs/Startup] folder from your start menu and each time you boot Windows the program will run. If the elements are "up to date" then you see nothing. The program runs and exits. However if your elements are older than the alert age, the dialog box will pop open to remind you to get current. On my 933MHz PIII it takes less than a second to load examine a file with 1500 element sets and either exit or display the dialog.

If you are using a "stable" OS (WinXP,2000) and don't reboot your computer on a regular basis, you might use the Scheduled Tasks option to run the program on a regular basis. I have my computer scheduled to run it once each day and when my element sets get too dusty (old), the alert finally pops on screen.

Another way you might use the program, create a batch file to run it when you run a satellite tracking program. For Windows XP folks you MUST use the START command in the batch file if you want both programs to open sequentially without user intervention. For instance a batch file on my system to run Nova for Windows and EleAge would look like this:

WHY?

Well for obvious reasons but, most of all, because I got derailed in my update activities for more than 90 days and when I checked back into the NASA OIG website, I realized my account had expired since I had not accessed it for 104 days! Drat. OIG was helpful and instantly reinstated me, but still it was a pain. So now I have this program pointed at my "master OIG file". If it gets older than 7 days, I get the alert.

Version History

Download

System Requirements
Windows 95/98/ME/NT/2000/XP
approximately 1 Megs of disk space (with system files)
Visual Basic 6 Service Pack 5 Runtime files (listed below)

BUG Reports

Bugs will inevitably be discovered. So, report it when you are "lucky enough" to be the one to find it!

I and other users will appreciate it!

Installation

Current Version 1.0.5
8-Nov-2004

For ALL Upgrading Users - Read the Following Paragraphs!!!

Version 1.0.1 has New INI file Structure

You MUST recreate your eleage.ini file. The program will prompt you to do so.

If you have downloaded the full installation of Version 1.0.0 or later, then you need only download the "Lite" version to update.

Previously I recommended an uninstall of a previous version prior to installing the "full installation file". It appears this isn't really necessary. Just make sure to carefully read the messages during installation. Often, you may have newer versions of DLLs than those being installed by EleAge. KEEP your newer versions. They should work fine with EleAge and they are NECESSARY to some other program that installed them. 

If you decide to take the cautious route then, on the windows desktop, click Start/Settings/Control Panel. Select Add/Remove Programs and select EleAge from the programs to remove. EleAge and all of its associated files will be deleted. Don't remove any Shared files.  Once you've done this, run the setup program. The new version of EleAge will be installed. If you have any subdirectories under the /Program Files/EleAge folder (or where ever you've installed EleAge) these folders and their contents will be retained through this process. When you reinstall EleAge, the "EleAge.ini" file should still be in the program directory. Start EleAge, the old ini file should load examine the element file pointed to in the INI file.

Download EleAge105.zip this file size is around 312Kb
This is the primary file.  It contains all of files to install and run EleAge properly on your machine. That is, providing you already have Visual Basic Version 6.0 service Pack 5 runtime files (see below).

Download the zip file, place it in an empty directory (actually any directory but an empty one will be easier to clean up after you're finished with the install file). Unzip it and then execute the Setup.exe program. This will install EleAge in the "c:\Program Files\EleAge" subdirectory (you can select a different directory if you wish) and install a couple of activeX modules (.OCX) and DLLs to the windows system directory. If you want to be rid of EleAge, go to Start/Settings/Control Panel/Add,Remove Programs and click on EleAge to remove the program. If prompted about leaving shared files on your machine, I'd recommend you leave them. They may be used by other VB programs you have. They might also be related to some IE 4/5/6 component. They don't take up too much space, and you will probably need them for some future program you download. All program files I create for EleAge are NOT Shared, so they will all be removed.

If this is your FIRST use of EleAge, go immediately to the Setup Screen and set the element file to be checked, the age you want to be alerted for, the sort key and order and the UTC Offset (if any) and click save Those values will be used each time the program runs from then on.

Download EleAge105Lite.zip this file is around 20Kb.
If you have downloaded the full install above, then to upgrade you need only download this zip which contains the EXE file only. Unzip it and place elage.exe in the appropriate folder where you previously installed it with the full installation file.

Visual Basic Run Time Files
If you don't have the Visual Basic V 6.0 runtime files then download a copy of Vbrun60sp5.exe.