RCT Change Notes

Richard R. Treffers
Date: December 6, 2022
In updating the RCT many changes were made by Kevin. Here are some of the big ones:

The new computer is really nice. It is spunky and it so nice to have everything on one machine. Internet connection to the mountain is a bit flaky. When it works it is fine but is sometimes unreachable.

The following is a short note on some of the software changes (in no particular order).

Software

Porting the software from the old (rct) computer to the new (pima) computer is a big job. I decided not to simply copy everything as there was a lot of dead wood. Also I was unsure on how to incorporate newer code that has been written in the past decade with various improvements (and new bugs). The code on pima now consists of two parts: 
~treffers/Documents/OldCode - contains the the older code, ported and modified as needed
~treffers/Documents/Code - contains stuff written after the RCT was dedicated

~rct/bin - contains links to the relevant programs and scripts most go to Code, but some go to OldCode.

Web Page

I installed a new Apache web server on pima. It has pretty much the same format as the old rct but has been somewhat updated to reflect the new situation. I have updated the Old Documents as I use them for figuring out what I have done. I have not changed the prettier parts of the documentation.

The Request generator has been left pretty much intact, but the PHP code has been modified a bit due to a change to accessing the MySQL. Anything to do with RCTML has been commented out (is this ok?).

Database

The MySQL database on rct was ported onto pima with very few changes. 
The new server is actually MariaDB rather than MySQL 
The Weather table was modified (see Weather below)
I did not remove old stuff; this might be desirable but above my pay grade.

CCD

The imaging software is pretty much the same. The image program takes the images and writes the FITs files. The only changes is that the rleach server program runs on pima rather than an external computer.

The various image analysis programs (my XVIsta) routines use newer code and may have new behavior and require the .fits extension explicitly.

The new server rleach has a few changes: 

amp - selection is not available (it can be added on request)
tim, lod, reset - have been implemented but not tested
tset - the temperature set point has been implemented but is not tested 
window  or box reads have not been implemented (it can be added upon request)
tset - cannot be read out (I have asked astro-cam about this)
It has not been well tested.

The CCD may have a leak.. it is about -80 and seems to be getting warmer.

rleach has been implemented so that the number of rows and columns to readout can be changed at startup. Determining what these number should be (i.e. overscan) is above my pay grade.

Guider

The guider was changed in the following ways: 
The Electrim camera was replaced by an Allied Vision Manta camera
The Oculus computer running Windows XP has been retired
The guimage to image camera=guider

The rmanta guider server has been installed, but has some bugs when used at higher (>2) binning levels. There is also some issue with the gain setting. It has not been tested on site.

The guimage program has been replace by the image with the option camera=guider. The default binning is 1 as set in the environment.

I haven't tested the acquire but dropped the dark subtraction as the new guider seems to have virtually no dark current. I haven't ported or tested guide programs. Nor the setstage script.

I have speculated about assigning the guide star when the observation is scheduled and putting it into the database rather than doing at run time.

Weather

The weather station seems to be working. The only changes I made are the following: 
Added CCDTemp and Slit to the weather database to record CCD temp and Slit open/close
Changed the weatherd from program to script
The weather daemon and display web pages seem to work.

Scheduling and Execution

The programs insgen and telco have been copied almost verbatim and they compiled with the only changes reflect some changes to the MySQL interface. insgen import - ran and generated a reasonable looking target list. telco is barely tested but seems ok.

Telescope Operation

The rctel, rslit, and rstage programs have been ported virtually without change and appear to work although I haven't really tested them as I don't want to move anything. I did read the state of the mirror and interlocks and turned on the flood lights. The webcam works too.

The temperature sensors have not been implemented yet. The DGH code has been deleted or commented out.

My newer code has a couple of differences and I am thinking of incorporating them into the present code. 

The default equinox is 2000.0 (ICRS) rather than the current epoch
Cntrl^C when used with the tx command will stop things

Scripts

I have copied and modified the important workhorse script photo. The amp parts have been deleted. However, it has not been tested in the least.

dopoint has been ported, but needs to be tested.

focus has been ported but will not work as the temperature sensors are not implemented yet. The old focusdip and focanl have not been brought over.

The scripts openup, closedown, weatherpause have been slightly modified but are untested.

Catalogs

The star and planet programs are in a bit of flux. The old Tycho, and Nomad stars have been replaced by Gaia, but I haven't finished this part.

The horizons script should work now that the more modern form of curl is available.

Servers and Startnet

The number of servers has been increased but they all run on pima The startnet script has been modified to start them as before. The show script has been modified to show their logs The list is: 
Servers:
rctel - telescope server
rslit - dome slit and weather
rstage - filter wheel and stage
rleach - CCD readout
rmanta - guider readout

Daemons:
weatherd - weather recorder
telco - telescope operator
bulld - UTC - UT1 offset (not used yet)
index