Carnegie-DIMM Manual - Release Notes

v2.2, v2.1, v2.0
v1.18, v1.17, v1.16, v1.15, v1.14, v1.13, v1.12, v1.11, v1.09, v1.04, v1.00

v2.2.4 (2022-02-18)

Removed <CR> characters from the "measurement timeout" and "scanline error" messages in the night report.

The <CR> characters caused the mail program to send the night reports as attachments instead of plain text.

I recommend restarting the GUI or rebooting the computer after the DIMM-GUI shut down observerations and switched to AutoDIMM=OFF due to these system errors.

v2.2.3 (2022-02-15)

Added counters that allow 3 CCD readout failures or measurement timeouts before turning OFF AutoDIMM.

Please restart the GUI (or reboot the computer) when this happens.

v2.2.2 (2022-02-04)

Fixed handling a failed CCD scanline by adding a system shutdown after turning OFF AutoDIMM.

v2.2.1 (2022-02-03)

Shutdown and turn OFF AutoDIMM when an "Illegal Telescope Position" is detected.

v2.2 (2021-09-29)

Use the watchdog of the Acromag to close the dome and power-off all decives when the GUI loses contact with the Acromag (eg. host computer crash).

The timeout of the Acromag watchdog is set to 5 minutes at the startup of the GUI, and disabled when the GUI is closed.

v2.1 (2021-07-12)

Added the vertical prism alignment (dy) to the logfile and status report.

v2.0.4 (2020-11-10)

Fixed a crash when 'report state' was requested from two processes simultaneously.

v2.0.3 (2019-08-15)

Fixed the calculation of the "moon-phase".

The fraction of moon-illumination is used for the selection of the DIMM-star.

v2.0.2 (2019-06-19)

Suspend operations for at least 15 minutes when the wind limit is exceeded.

This avoids frequent close/open cycles in gusty conditions.

v2.0.1 (2019-01-29)

Turn off the CCD power after a failed initialization.

v2.0 (2019-01-28)

Close the (SBIG) driver when the CCD camera fails to open.

The driver will fail to open (even after a power cycle) if it was not closed earlier.

Auto-save the object list everytime it is changed.

v2-beta-0213 (2018-11-08)

Clear the "suspended" state at sunrise.

The night report was sent after the suspension ended, now it will be sent after sunrise.

Turn off AutoDIMM and suggest a restart of the GUI when the readout of the SBIG camera never finishes.

The "hanging" readout thread cannot be safely removed.

Re-ordered some statements to avoid a race condition if there are multiple reasons to shut down.

Added some more logging to catch it when it happens anyways.

Fixed a bug that had the dome "moving" forever if the communication with the Acromag failed.

Mark “Dome=Unknown” in the DIMM state (on website)

Retry to close the dome every 30 seconds.

v2-beta-0207 (2018-10-03)

Added a "report" entry when an automatic CSET is performed.

Fixed a bug when requesting the "time remaining" of the AP mount watchdog.

v2-beta-0206 (2018-10-02)

Added an "Auto CSET" check box to the General preferences pane.

Write a TPOINT record before calling "CSET" after the spiral search.

v2-beta-0205 (2018-10-01)

Automatically "CSET" the target coordinates after running a successul centering spiral when in AutoDIMM mode.

v2-beta-0203 (2018-09-12)

Added hour angle and pier side to the "cdimm_state" file.

When the CCD or telescope initialization fails, power cycle the device and try again.

Increased the "suspend" time after such an event from 15 to 60 minutes.

v2-beta-0201 (2018-09-05)

Log the internal state of the GUI every 10 seconds.

Try to track down the cause of a strange "stalling" for 50 minutes of the GUI last night.

v2-beta-0200 (2018-08-31)

Fixed a bug that prevented the system messages to show up on the Messages window.

That bug had been introcuded in v0199 when I added the system messages to be logged in the "Internal" logfile.

v2-beta-0199 (2018-08-30)

Power down and suspend for 15 minutes when the initialization of the CCD or telescope fails (when in AutoDIMM mode).

v2-beta-0198 (2018-08-29)

No tracking after powering up the mount

Turn on the tracking before each slew

Turn off tracking before parking

Introduce a ignorePointing flag that triggers "feeding" the watchdog without checking the current pointing.

set ignorePointing flag at power-up

unset ignorePointing flag after every slew

set ignorePointing flag before parking (power down)

Read-back the watchdog timer from the APmount every 2 seconds when the telescope is idle (powerd, but not slewing)

The retured value is displayed in the upper right corner of the TeleGUI window.

Note: The CDIMM-GUI does not act (yet) on the dectection of an illegal position, except it does not "feed" the watchdog.

v2-beta-0196 (2018-08-18)

Automatically subract 180 [deg] from the pa-offset value (.xml file) when the pier side is "West".

Feed the watchdog of the AstroPhysics mount.

v2-beta-0194 (2018-08-14)

Shutdown if the measurement takes too long (measureTime+30 seconds).

This may happen if the CCD camera gets "stuck".

Added a "check-box" (HardHat/Tele) to allow a meridian flip when making an absolute telescope move.

AutoDIMM mode is not allowed while the meridian flip is enabled.

Display the current pier side on the TeleGUI window.

The pier side is read from the AP mount at startup and after each telescope motion.

v2-beta-0191 (2018-08-07)

Removed the "SLEEP" state from the CCD and telescope.

The CCD will be turned off when not in use.

The telescope will be moved to the "park" position and power off when not in use.

Added "cloud-limit" {0..1} parameter to the defaults.xml file.

minFlux = expectedFlux * cloudLimit

Added "flux-limit" [counts] parameter to the defaults.xml file.

This is an absolute number of counts in the star (not scaled by the exposure time).

Write a line to the logfile after each focus move:

"focus motor was running for %.2f seconds"

v2-beta-0190 (2018-08-06)

Increased the presicion of the hour-angle to 2 digits (%.2f) in the logfile.

Normalize the hour angle to {-12..+12} everywhere.

Read the "HA-limit" from the .xml file:

ha_limit1: default=-5.0 (Pier/West: HA > ha_limit1, East: HA < -ha_limit1)

ha_limit2: default= 2.0 (Pier/West: HA < ha_limit2, East: HA > -ha_limit2)

I changed the "≥" ("≤") to ">" ("<").

Fixed the TPOINT logfile format.

v2-beta-0189 (2018-08-03)

Update the sun-altitude every 30 seconds (was 60).

The sun altitude was updated internally (ie. the AutoDIMM would open the dome), but the GUI was not upated when the telescope was powered off.

Added the hour angle to the logfile (after each measurement).

v2-beta-0188 (2018-08-02)

CSET sends the coordinates of the last

Send on the TeleGUI or

MoveTo on the ObjectList window

Implemented the proper TPOINT format.

Set the slew limits to

West: HA = {-5.0..2.0} (was -5.0..1.5)

East: HA = {-2.0..5.0} (was -1.5..5.0)

v2-beta-0187 (2018-08-01)

Display the hour angle on the DIMM window.

The display of Alt/Az was changed to 4 decimal places

Added a "Park" button to the Tele/Hardhat.

Added a "MoveToAltAz" button to the Tele/Hardhat.

Implemented the focus control using the Acromag.

The "Foc+" and "Foc-" buttons should move 1/2 of the "fthreshold" value

The AutoFocus should work once the "fspeed" value has been determined

Please note that the sign of "fspeed" should be positive (currently 2.58)

v2-beta-0186 (2018-07-31)

Increased the slew rate of the "jog" sliders on the Tele/Hardhat.

Added a control to move the focus motor on the Acromag/Hardhat.

Fixed a bug in the precession function.

The "Pole" calibration uses declination = -89.99722

v2-beta-0185 (2018-07-26)

defaults.xml: latitude=-29.01392, longitude=-70.69284

Slow down telescope "jogging"

v2-beta-0184 (2018-07-09)

First tests with the Astro-Physics mount at LCO.

2018/February-May

Tests with the Astro-Physics (1100-GTO) mount.

Implement the AP protocol (similar to the Meade) in the CDIMM software.

v2-beta-0141 (2017-08-01)

Setup the Meade telescope using the "hI", "St", "Sg" and "SS" commands when the gps flag is set to '0' in the identity.xml file.

2017/March - June

Tests with the Takahashi Temma (EM-500) mount.

The Meade telescope mount and the GPS are failing more often.

v2-beta-0109 (2017-02-15)

Request the latitude/longitude multiple times if they are inconsistent with the setup.

v2-beta-0107 (2017-02-14)

Ignore -once- a TCP/IP timeout from the Meade telescope during startup.

v2-beta-0105 (2016-10-21)

Added power on/off buttons on the hardhat for the CCD and telescope.

v2-alpha-00xx (2015-06-01)

Dome/Acromag controls

v2-alpha-00xx (2015-05-26)

SBIG/CCD controls

v2-alpha-0000 (2015-03-11)

Started porting the Windows GUI to macOS.

v1.18j (2015-02-09)

Fixed a bug that always made the "eff. observing time" appear to be "0h 1m" in the daily report.

v1.18i (2015-01-12)

"info": Replaced the current UT date/time, telescope altitude and azimuth with the values at the time of the last measurement.

v1.18h (2014-06-12)

Added the current UT date and time to the response to the "info" command:

  "2014-06-12 00:26:06 110.0854 69.6647 0.690 10647.1 HR-1956\n"

v1.18g (2014-05-06)

Added the "info" command to the TCP/IP interface:

It returns the current telescope pointing (azimuth,elevation), the seeing, counts and the object name.

  -> "info\n"
  <- "110.0854 69.6647 0.690 10647.1 HR-1956\n"

v1.18f (2014-05-05)

Added two commands to the TCP/IP interface:

"seeing": returns the seeing and counts.

"pointing": returns the telescope azimuth and elevation.

v1.18e (2014-04-16)

Halt the effective observing time counter during telescope slews and focussing.

v1.18d (2014-03-31)

Display UT instead of local time in the Messages window.

Write the total effective observing time to the night report.

v1.18c (2014-03-24)

Change the 'mass_fov' status from boolean (true,false) to a string describing its geometry (eg. "FOV= [316:469,234:427]")

Write the error string from the Meade telescope to the logfile when its controller reports an object as unreachable.

Note: It appears the level sensor of the Meade telescope is not working properly.

v1.18b (2014-02-10)

Reload 'mass_port' from 'cdimm.ini' when any of the Debug->MASS menus is selected.

If the 'massfov' parameters are set in cdimm.ini then use the MASS spiral search step size.

Added 'mass_fov' flag to the DIMM status web-page.

v1.18a (2014-02-05)

Always use the “massfov-“ parameters when present in cdimm.ini

Added Debug->MASS menus

• Init (sends “INIT" to the MASS)
• Status (sends the “GET STATUS” to the MASS)

These may be used for communication testing as they run in the background.

The MASS initialization is running in a background thread. The main program waits for 60 seconds. If there is no response, the C-DIMM software continues without the MASS.

v1.17 (2012-08-09)

New object lists (dimm.objects, mass.objects) that contain V- and R-magnitudes.

The C-DIMM software uses the color and current airmass of the DIMM star to calulate a flux correction that is used in the state-report and in the daily log-report (see v1.16).

The flux in the state- and log-reports is derived from the scans (was pointing images).

cthreshold parameter (default=15) in cdimm.ini

Automatic re-centering if the objects star(s) are more that cthreshold arc-seconds from the center.

The re-centering is implemented by applying timed offsets using the "M{nsew}" commands of the Meade telescope.

fthreshold paramter (default=1) in cdimm.ini

Sets the maximum separation (focus) error before moving the focus motor.

v1.16 (2011-06-30)

State and Log Reporting

The C-DIMM software can send the current status and a log when requested via the TCP/IP command report (see below).

A separate 'report' tool (report.c) downloads the current state (or log) of the C-DIMM software and copies the data to the local disk. Starting this tool as a cron job at regular intervals allows to create a simple WWW status page and sending the logs by email.

Examples: active state, idle state, logfile.

spiral-size paramter (default=0) in cdimm.ini

Limits the number of positions that the C-DIMM software searches before giving up on a particular object.

0: 48 positions without MASS, 80 positions with MASS

1: 8 positions (3x3 grid)

2: 24 positions (5x5 grid)

3: 48 positions (7x7 grid)

4: 80 positions (9x9 grid)

New wind data file (.wnd)

The C-DIMM software listens on a TCP/IP socket and resonds to the following commands:

version

returns the current version number (eg. "1.16s")

auto {on,off}

switches the AutoDIMM mode; returns the current state ("auto= ON")

shutdown

shuts down DIMM operations (returns "shutdown in progress"):
turns off AutoDIMM mode; powers off the CCD and telescope and closes the dome. The operations may be resumed by sending the "auto on" command.

report {state,log}

This command is used by the report tool to retrieve status information and logs from the C-DIMM software.
"report" returns one of three states:

"ACTIVE (night)" : data acquisition running
"IDLE (night)" : no data acquistion running (eg. Magellan closed)
"IDLE (day)" : daytime

"report state" returns the number of lines in the current state report (eg. "6"). Each line can be requested by sending "report state #" to the C-DIMM software.
"report log" returns the oldest log entry or "@end" if no furthers entries are availble.

v1.15 (2011-04-14)

STOP button on the telescope GUI stops any telescope slew ('Q' command) and stops the dome motor.

Altitude/Azimuth/Sun display on the telescope GUI

The alt/az values are updated every 2 seconds during slews, otherwise once a minute.

meteo-host1 and meteo-host2 parameters in cdimm.ini

Note: 'meteo-host2' is queried only if 'meteo-host1' returns a 'closed' dome.

wind-limit paramter (default=30) in cdimm.ini

When this value (mph) is exceeded (as reported by the 'meteo-host') the software stops the measurements and closes the dome. The system will restart observations once the wind drops below 'wind-limit-5'.

log wind-speed, wind-direction and absolute image motion.

Conditions for starting observations assuming auto-dome=1 and auto-dimm=1:

sun altitude below twilight parameter, AND

meteo = OK

Without a meteo-host the 'meteo' value is simply set in the GUI.
When a meteo-host is defined the 'meteo' state is set to 'OK' if

any 'meteo-host' reports an open dome AND

the open 'meteo-host' reports a wind speed below 'wind-limit-5'

Conditions for stopping observations assuming auto-dome=1 and auto-dimm=1:

sun altitude above twilight parameter, OR

meteo = BAD, OR

there are 2 ( ) failed attempts of centering an object.

This causes the observations to become suspended for 30 minutes. After that the system will re-open and try again. If the sun altitude is the reason for stopping observations the telescope will be parked and the CCD turned off, otherwise the telescope will just sleep.

v1.14 (2011-03-28)

The C-DIMM software automatically open/closes the dome via an 'Acromag' digital I/O unit (dome-host) when the 'auto-dome' parameter is set to 1. The software also turns on the fan at startup and turns off the light after 2 minutes.

The software compares the calculated sidereal time (from the PC clock) with the time returned by the GPS unit to synchronize the telescope startup after power-up.

New parameters in telescope.ini:

safe-az: defaults to -1 (not used, backwards compatibility)

safe-el: defaults to -1 (not used)

During the shutdown procedure the telescope is moved to this position before it is parked

auto-setup parameter in cdimm.ini

If there is a dome-host defined in 'cdimm.ini', the C-DIMM software reads the power status for the telescope and CCD at startup.

If auto-setup is '1' (default) then the CDIMM software will

If the power is on: run the usual initialization sequence.

If the power if off: turn on power and run the TBD initialization sequence
If auto-setup is '0' the CDIMM software does not take any action, ie. if the power (telescope/CCD) is off, it stays off.
Note: The default for these parameter ('1') maintains backwards compatibility with previous versions.

auto-dome parameter in cdimm.ini

If there is no dome-host defined in 'cdimm.ini' the software uses a "virtual" dome that opens/closes following the same rules a the "real" dome.

If the auto-dome parameter is '1' (default) the dome will be automatically open/closed depending on the sun's altitude and the menu->File->Meteo flag set by the user.

If the auto-dome parameter is '0' the dome has to be manually opened before the observations may start and needs to be closed at the end of the night, or when the weather turns bad.
Note: The default for these parameter ('1') maintains backwards compatibility with previous versions.

v1.13 (2010-08-23)