Issues as of 11/14/12

Thing are rolling, just slowly. I have been testing the telescope startup scripts with great success. Now focus lies in working with single object observations and ironing out all the kinks.

Currently single object observations is where RTS2 only has one target to observe. It is much more controlled than just adding a bunch of targets and setting RTS2 lose and hoping for the best.

With single target observations I have came across several problems that I didn't expect. Focus is currently the biggest issue. I didn't realize how badly focus can be set due to temperature at the start of observation. Since Autofocus is one of the complex problems I will write a small script to do rough focus, or close to optimal focus, at beginning of observation. This simply serves as a band-aid for current operations and will be replaced in the future, stage 3.

Another issue that seems simple but turned out to be way more complex is determining exposure time without any manual input. In the end BORAT should be able to slew to a target and within a few images determine the best exposure time, not to bright and not to dim.

There are many end cases where this can fail so we hope to solve this soon. For now an observer, currently me, will manually set exposure times  of 15s.

Next few night will be clear and will be ironing out more bugs. Stay tuned...


Software

• Modify focus driver to test independent pieces to pinpoint cause of mirror flop - Done and fixed
• RTS2 LX200GPS driver getting overhauled to actually work, and to support LX200GPS specific features like sleep etc - Done, sleep on standby
• Astrometry needs to be brought back into observation procedure - TBA
• In target Autofocus moved to Stage 3, see BORAT status page above.
• Startup/Shutdown observatory scripts - Done
• Night report - Testing
• Filename formats set close to our guidelines - Done
• On observation focuser receives NaN for TOC_TAR and crashes driver -Fixed
• Removed post processing script that failed moving images to trash - Done
• Need to implement log rotations, RTS2 logs getting toooo big- Testing

Hardware

• HP Server needs temperature switch rigged for temperatures < 32F or 0C
• Boltwood sensor reporting clear skies as cloudy - Now showing cloudy when not, back to driver

 Security - ON HOLD