Useful software

 
Uninstall ATM

A few ways to initiate this:

• Click the Windows start button, navigate to the "Thinking Stuff's ATM vX.Y.Z" group, click "Uninstall Thinking Stuff's ATM"
• Click the Windows start button, then Control Panel, then "Add/Remove Programs" (XP and below) or "Programs and Features" (Vista and above). Find the right version of ATM and click to uninstall it.
• Use something like Revo Uninstaller, which does a more thorough job of uninstalling stuff.
   

Delete extra files

If you are uninstalling for the purposes of upgrading to a new version, you are all done.

If you want to remove all traces of ATM from your machine, then there are some more steps involved. Uninstallers can only remove files that were part of the original installation. Any files created by the program itself are not removed, i.e. your settings files, the price history files, etc. You will have to delete them by yourself.

• The settings files. Only you know where you created these. They end in .tsatm so you could search your computer.
• The price history files. They end in .tsphd
• The ini file - search for tsatm.ini
• The ATM installation directory, normally somewhere like "c:\Program Files\Thinking Stuff\ATM vX.Y.Z". Sometimes it might be left behind even though it's empty.

Everything is a nifty little tool which can search your computer in seconds.
 

The settings file and price data files are standard relational databases. Like Microsoft Access files, if you're familiar with that. But Microsot Access has some size restrictions, so instead we use Firebird SQL embedded databases. Same but different. To open these files and peek inside you can grab some freeware (and help documentation) from sqlmanager.net
 

This section outlines software written by other people, that you can use (normally free), to alter the way ATM behaves.

You may not need any of these, or in fact you might want to use different software to that listed below. That's fine. In fact if you have any other suggestions or alternatives, we'd appreciate hearing about them.

We have no affiliation with any of the companies that offer the software, we probably can't help you if anything goes wrong with them, and perhaps we aren't even using the software ourselves.
 

To get ATM to run as a Windows service

A program running as a Windows service has the ability to automatically re-start itself if ever it or the computer crashes. That's why you may want to run ATM as a Windows service.

FireDaemon Pro can turn any program into a Windows service. It costs US$39 (last time we checked)

Troupware's Control Running Programs (CRP) does something similar, in that it ensures another program is always running. This one's free. [Had some problems connecting to the website though, but still available for download from freeware sites].

XYNTService looks like a good option if you're a bit more technically-savvy. It's free and open-source. It has a (separate) GUI interface, and also a version made specifically for Vista and above.

Watchdog (free) might also work. As might Keep-Alive ($39.99, and be warned of a very Geocities-style website).
 

To have ATM do things as soon as it starts

It's no good to just have ATM start itself again after a crash - presumably you would also want ATM to resume whatever it was doing.

AutoHotKey (AHK) is a free program that you can use to then click the buttons you want clicked - just as if you were doing the clicking yourself. Basically you record a macro. Running the macro then repeats whatever you did (mouse clicks, mouse movements, key strokes, etc) while you were recording the macro.

So a combination of FireDaemon Pro, plus AutoHotKey, lets you setup ATM to recover from crashes all without the need for you to do anything.

DoOver is maybe a simpler alternative. It was actually made using AHK, but you don't need to know anything about AHK to use it.

Sikuli is a recent new alternative which you might find easier than AHK. Instead of recording a macro and maybe editing the macro script it creates, you take screenshots of what you want clicked.
 

To have ATM minimise to the system tray

There are a bunch of free applications that we know of that can make any program minimise to the system tray:

Minime lets you minimise any software to the one icon in the system tray.

TrayIt!, PowerMenu, Trayconizer.
 
See also:

• Automating ATM

If you're going to download any of the text files containing historical price data from the brokers, there is some free software that is going to make your life a whole lot easier.
 

downTHEMall!

Especially with Gain Capital, there are *a lot* of files to download. If you do one at a time you'll probably go insane. I used to do it that way until I found a better method. Using a combination of the free Firefox web browser (an Internet Explorer replacement), and a free Firefox extension called downTHEMall!, you can download a month's worth of files with a couple of clicks.

Here are the steps:

1. Download Firefox.
2. Install Firefox.
3. Run Firefox.
4. Using Firefox, browse to the downTHEMall! extension page.
5. Click on the link that says to "Install Now for Windows".
6. When that finishes, close down Firefox.
7. Restart Firefox.

Now you're ready to get the historical price data.

Using downTHEMall! also ensures that if you are disconnected for any reason, the download can pick up from where it left off (and not have to re-download the file from the beginning).
 

Text File Cleaver

Some of the files you download, especially those from Oanda, are huge. The Oanda ones contain around 20 million rows of tick price data, and ATM will probably not be able to load a big file like that in one go because of the database timeout setting on the Options window.

Instead, please use a file-splitting utility such as Text File Cleaver. Using the default options, Text File Cleaver splits the one big file into a number of smaller files, each containing 65,000 rows. ATM can easily process those files individually within the timeout period. For the Oanda file I tested with, 299 smaller files were produced.

The reason for recommending Text File Cleaver (aside from that it's free), is that it keeps each row intact. Other file splitters just split the file after a particular number of characters, which often falls in the middle of a row of price data.

Simply follow this link, scroll down to find the "Text File Cleaver" section, download and install.
 

ATM is great in that you can start it and then go and do other things. Even travel around the world like (at least) one of my customers has done.

The question is then, how do you keep track of what ATM is doing? Or what if you want to change something while you're away?

The answer is to set your computer up so you can access it from wherever you have an internet connection. In other words, access your computer remotely.

There are a number of possible ways to do this. The one I have settled on is described below. You can do some research and decide upon a different method if you like. Just know that with accessing your computer remotely, there are two kinds of differences in the things that the software allows you to do.

1. If you can transfer files between your computer and the one you are using to access it remotely; and
2. If you can use your computer remotely without somebody being physically at that computer to press a button saying it's ok that someone is about to access it remotely ("unattended login").

LifeHacker asked readers what they used and compiled a top 5.

The simplest method is probably the free service provided by LogMeIn. And that's what I use.

That free service allows unattended login, but no file transfer. No file transfer is not really a problem if all you want to do is check on ATM and maybe alter some settings.

To organise file transfer capabilities with LogMeIn, I guess there are 2 choices. First, you could upgrade to their paid version. Second, you could use the free version of LogMeIn in conjunction with another free service called DropBox. DropBox lets you sync files across multiple computers. So you copy the files to a particular directory on your local computer, and DropBox automatically syncs any files in that directory to your remote computer. When the upload/download is complete you have now essentially transferred that file. Their free service allows up to 2Gb of storage, which suits most cases.

I chose the free services above because they are easy to install, and their restrictions don't really bother me. But restrictions there are. If you're looking for free software that does everything, then read this LifeHacker post to install TightVNC. It's a little bit trickier to set up, but if you succeed then it's worthwhile.

We won't be able to help you if you get stuck though. Google is your best friend.
 

I asked one of my customers for a brief description of how he set TS up on a dedicated server.  Here is his reply.  Thanks mate :-)

I'm with http://superbservers.net on the 'server solo package'. (after a lot of research on the net I chose this.  Make sure to choose the "East Coast Datacentre - Dulles, VA".  FYI - Oanda's servers are with Server Vault in Mclean, VA).

Details of my server......P 4 2.4 ghz, 512 ram, 1000 gb traffic and with windows 2003 standard edition.  It costs usd 104.00 a month.  Setup fee of USD$75 for the first month.  I didn't choose any additional add-ons.  This package is stil available on their site.

No additional softwares installed.  Just the ones that are required by TS.  (PostgreSQL, Oanda API files, etc etc.  The .NET framework is already preinstalled).  TS should be able to connect to the version and subscription-checking database, if not just open up IE and allow connections to www.thinkingstuff.com.

To access the database, I only use window's Remote Desktop Connection under Start/Accessories/Communications.  It's simple and easy.  I have not tried other programs like logmein.com or ultraVNC etc etc.

My local computer is on windows XP pro ed2.  If somehow the person has a different version of windows which doesn't have RDC like windows 98, they need to use third party remote access programs as mentioned above.  They can also connect to the server using Internet Explorer but that's a bit technical and I haven't tried that.

hmmm thats about it.  Alerts from TS are important especially the 'Everything is ok' email.

I get it sent to me every 30 mins.  And using Gmail and Gmail notifier detinitely helps.

Do database maintenance every weekend.  Most of the server maintenance part, I do it manually.

So I actually have to log in quite a couple of times if there are problems like server downtime (never happened), Gmail down (can't receive alerts), Oanda disconnections (never happened), or TS server down.  You can't automate everything... but all in all I'm a happy customer of TS and superbservers.net :-)

And what about anti-virus?

hehe nah I'm an anti-anti-virus person.  Only believe in firewalls (Comodo) and routine spyware and adware and virus checks.  But at the moment no, I don't do this on the server.

The only security is the default settings of the server.  I'm trying to limit the number of applications I install on it.  Afraid that anti-virus and third-party firewalls might screw things up with windows 2003.

At the beginning, I had to open up Internet Explorer to download PostgreSQL and TS and to Gmail to download Oanda's api files.  So those are the only websites that I allowed connection.  I couldn't find a way to transfer files using RDC.  But I'm aware that the third-party programs are able to do this by just 'click-drag-drop'.

Quick explanation of why you probably don't need an anti-virus on a dedicated server, is that viruses come through websites you visit, or from infected files you download.  You wouldn't normally use the dedicated server for web-browsing, or normal day-to-day use.  So if you limit your browsing to only essential, trusted websites, and you limit the software to only essential, trusted software, then theoretically you shouldn't have any problems with viruses.  It all depends on your risk profile.

And that's what he means by "opening up Internet Explorer", is that on a dedicated server, the one this customer is using at least, you need to explicitly allow access to the websites that you want to visit.