The software used to implement AST@RHO is a mixture of commercial and "home grown". All of the low level telescope and dome control software has been written by John Oliver in Visual Basic 6.0. This was required since the telescope was not a commercial product and the telescope control systems were also "home grown". The operating system was Windows 98SE (the old encoder board and stepper board do not have drivers available for other operating systems). New boards have been acquired and a new system running Windows 2K is just being commissioned. The telescope web access and control function is provided by The Astronomer's Control Program 3 (ACP3) from DC3 Dreams. This allows custom web pages to be written as active server pages (asp). ACP3 provides password protected access control to the telescope and dome systems. The CCD camera is controlled using MaxIm DL/CCD.

The telescope, focus, CCD, and dome low level software are all written to be compatible with the ASCOM standard. This allows the sharing of code and scripts with the large and active community of astronomers using automated telescopes to carry out astronomical research.