As some of you may be aware, there is a little program called ED Market Connector. It is mainly used by traders to pull market data from the stations they are docked in and send it to EDDN and/or to a local file to be used by third party tools to find trade routes.
Because it uses the EDAPI that was developed for the ED App, it has the benefit of being 100% accurate in it's data collection. This is important to sites such as INARA as Artie will only accept data from EDDN that uses the EDAPI method to make sure it has reliable accurate data.
It also has the the ability to update EDDN with what ships are available in the shipyard for the station you are at. This was a great benefit to using it. It has recently been updated.
Now we have ANOTHER reason to use this great little tool: It now can also pull all the Outfitting Information for the station and send that to EDDN which is now providing that data to sites such as INARA for us to search for any item we need for our ships.
The Market Data, Shipyard Data, and Outfitting Information is really good for everyone, so if you have never thought of using this tool, and even if you are not a Trader, you can help the community.
The tool is open source and the source code has been vetted by the community to do what it says and only what it says. The one caveat that I have is that you have to give it your Frontier Credentials that you use on the Frontier Store website. If you don't feel safe doing so, then don't use this tool. I have every confidence in this tool and have no issue using it.
Now, you can get the tool here: https://github.com/Marginal/EDMarketCon ... stallation (both Mac and PC versions are available)
You can Read more about it Here: https://github.com/Marginal/EDMarketConnector/wiki
and Here: http://edcodex.info/?m=tools&entry=150
Once you have installed it, you have to give it your username and password, and then an email code from frontier will be sent to your email with an auth code that you must enter into the program. Once that happens, it will log in and wait for you to tell it to update.
When you have landed at a station or outpost, you just click update (or assign a Hotkey in the settings to trigger it) and you will hear a sound to let you know it has gotten the information. You can use VA to press the Hotkey you assign, or macro it to one of your HOTAS buttons even. (I have both setup depending on if I am using VA at the time or not)
It sends the Market, shipyard, and outfitting to EDDN and then is forwarded out to sites such as INARA when they request it. If you are a trader and use another tool, such as Slopeys, Thrudds, or Trade Dangerous, you can also configure it to save the price files locally for the the market data. It is SO much faster than EliteOCR and 100% accurate, because it is from Frontier's Database.
Even if you are not a trader, using this program can help us get a more complete listing of where to get ships and modules, which is a win for everyone. When you land, you just make it part of your routine to click the button, give the command, or hit the joystick button, however you set it up, and you can help everyone.
Oh and it also tracks prices, and they are building the price checks into EDDN so we can in the future search for discounted Modules or Ships!