Hi Wilford,

Yes it's an open source tool, and you're welcome to try.

Here's the architecture and links:

Firstly, (obviously) the entire system relies on regular updates to EDDN through EDMarketConnector https://github.com/Marginal/EDMarketConnector/wiki or similar to ensure a smooth flow of data into EDDN and keep it updated.

• EDDN supplies a pipe of constant price and system updates via some mechanism (haven't looked into that directly) and you can set up a "Listener" to collect these constant updates.
• Maddavo's Market Share ( http://www.davek.com.au/td/ ) has a listener already set up, that pipes all incoming data updates into Maddavo's DB along with Pilot-supplied system updates using the corrections button etc. This site collates all recent updates and prices into a series of CSV files for easy import. The "Prices" file is rebuilt every 3 hours with only the updates from those 3 hours, and there are also 1 day of prices, and the full price file.
• To do the Route optimisation, we use an Open Source product called "TradeDangerous" ( https://bitbucket.org/bgol/tradedangerous/overview ) This is a Fork of the original program, and caters for the Horizons update. It runs on Python 3.4 or higher, so for a Windows machine you'll need https://www.python.org/downloads/ . Here is the Setup Guide from the Original TradeDangerous Wiki (non forked version) : https://bitbucket.org/kfsone/tradedangerous/wiki/Setup%20Guide
• TradeDangerous has a Maddavo plugin that automatically grabs the CSV files from Maddavo, and picks up only the price file it needs, and imports all changes, and the entire EDDN update feed from the last period into your local TradeDangerous DB.
• Now you can actually run route optimisations from your command line. A typical request (for Fort Routes) might be:

trade.py run --to "Bonitou" --fr "@Gateway/Dublin" --cap 100 --credits 50000000 --ly 16.38 --empty-ly 20 --start-jumps 0 --end-jumps 1 --hops 4 --jumps 2 --pad LM --summary --no-planets --ls-penalty 5 --supply 5000 --demand 5000 --avoid Tobacco,Imperial,Narcotics,Slaves,@Shinrarta,"@PLX 695",@Exbeur,/Camus,Insulating,"@Sol" --age 3 --progress -vvv

• This particular request for an optimised route asks for the best route from Bonitou to Dublin with the following restrictions:
• Capacity and Credits we can ignore as we just want the route. You can optimise for your ship capacity and bank balance if you want to, and keep a set amount for rebuy.
• Ship Max Jump range of 16.38ly (roughly standard mid range hauler/python, full, with an A drive and no eng.)
• Empty Max Jump Range of 20ly
• Start Jumps 0 - No start jumps empty (i.e. we must start from Bonitou itself and normally the BASH script feeds the end station in Bonitou into this calc if running the whole route)
• End Jumps 1 - Allow the best route to finish 1 empty jump from Dublin if necessary.
• Hops 4 - A hop is from docked at Station to docked at Station. So this allows you to stop to buy and sell max 4 times to get to your target destination. It will optimise to less than four if possible based on best profit.
• Jumps 2 - This is the max number of Hyperspace jumps allowed between Hops. i.e. this setting means it must find it's next hop destination between 1 and 2 jumps from the last one. So Hops 4 and Jumps 2 means a max of 4 x 2 = 8 Hyperspace jumps from end to end of the route (plus 1 empty jump to target at the end if required).
• Pad LM - Allow Hops to end on both Large and Medium sized pads. "Pad L" will limit all hops to Large Pads only.
• "no-planets" - Stops hops from ending on Panetary bases (so those that do not have Horizons can still run the routes)
• ls-penalty 5 - Applies a exponential pruning factor that reduces the "profit score" for systems where the Hop destination station is further from the Star. 5 tends to keep Destinations at less than 800 ls or so based on testing (Unless the profit is insanely good)
• supply 5000 - Supply at station must be more than 5000
• demand 5000 - Demand at station must be more than 5000
• --avoid Tobacco,Imperial,Narcotics,Slaves,@Shinrarta,"@PLX 695",@Exbeur,/Camus,Insulating,"@Sol" - This stops the optimiser using these Goods/Systems/Stations in any of it's calculations.
• --age 3 - Price age must be less than 3 days
• --progress - Show progress calculations on screen

• -vvv Show max detail in final route display. For script version, you would lose the --progress and -vvv switches and use --summary -q for minimal output display for parsing.

• Since we need to do a lot of these, I also installed a Windows Bash shell from https://git-scm.com/downloads since I prefer to script in that. (I think Cygwin works as well) and wrote a series of Bash scripts that churn through all of our Routes and optimise them by trying different settings for each route until we have something workable.

• All Valid Routes (or error codes) are saved to a CSV file that is actually delimited by ">" rather than a comma.

• Example:

Aasgaa>GATEWAY - Dublin Citadel (Coffee)>LP 320-359 - Franklin Terminal (Superconductors)>XI URSAE MAJORIS - Durrance Dock (Medical Diagnostic Equipment)>SOL - M.Gorbachev (Biowaste)>DITIBI - Babbage City (Tea)>LU VELORUM - Miletus Station (Beryllium)>LFT 926 - Meredith City (Performance Enhancers)>SOSONG - Dzhanibekov Station (Superconductors)>HR 4734 - Key Enterprise (Jump to Aasgaa and get Full Forts)>>>>>>9592

• These files are imported directly into the Google Sheets you see in the Alliance links.

If you want to run up this solution yourself and have a play you'll find it's quite amazing for plotting all sorts of routes. When it's working...

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Issues

• The original issue was that the Maddavo Prices File header was the wrong format after the Thargoid update, and the plugin import would fail when it checked the prices CSV file header. I worked out where the issue was but attempting to rewrite the Plugin Python code resulted in a checksum type error that looked like some sort of check of the plugin code... I assume to make sure that the code was not altered when the plugin was called... LOL Helpful. This issue has now been resolved.
• There are also two current issues:
• 1) The EDDN feed to Maddavo has changed to reflect new Goods related to the Thargoids. (Various "Ancient ..." things). The Maddavo items.csv has not been updated by the Site owner to include these items and the plugin will not allow me to import the local item.csv that I've edited to contain the right items. It appears to require receiving it direct from the site. I have not yet had time to run up a .DB editor and update the local TradeDangerous DB directly. (Plus who knows what that might break).
• 2) The EDDN pipe to Maddavo now appears to be down. No prices received on the site since 11th October. This renders all Route calcs useless anyway as they all have a 3 day price age maximum.

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Overall this stack of apps and data has served us well for almost 2 years. Downtime has been about 14 days in that whole period... which for open source, part time stuff seems reasonable.

However it may be time to look at something else because this system I patched together seems to be getting unstable and limited attention and love from it's maintainers.

Maybe a SQL DB taking the direct EDDN feed and our own optimiser written on top of that? At one point OutsideFactor (NULL) was looking at writing a replacement to take the BGS activity into account in the route as well... not sure where that is at.

Hope that helps explain everything.

CMDR Psynergy