Swope GUI Software Documentation - HowTo(s)

The Observatories of the Carnegie Institution for Science (Carnegie Observatories), Pasadena, CA

Location of this document: http://instrumentation.obs.carnegiescience.edu/Software/Swope/howto.html

Adjust Focus Limit Trigger -- Calibrate Filter Wheel -- Calibrate Guider

Adjust a Focus Limit Trigger

Use the Hardhat window and a 2nd person looking at the focus mechanism:

Unscrew the trigger "wheel" set screw and move the "wheel" away from the (negative?) limit.
Move the focus stage carefully (Jog control on the Hardhat window) towards the camera stage until the gap is about 1 mm. (TODO: direction negative?)
Adjust the trigger "wheel" just so that the limit is triggered and tighten the set screw.
Move the focus in the positive direction until the limit comes OFF.
Press the Home button of the focus axis; the focus should execute the Init procedure.

Calibrate a Filter Wheel

Once a filter wheel has been taken off the IMB and re-installed it is very likely that the absolute encoder position stored in

  Swope.app/Contents/Resources/wheel1.xml  (or wheel2.xml)

will not be correct anymore.
Since the distances between the filter positions will not have changed, the easiest way to re-calibrate a wheel is to move the wheel by hand to the Open position and the press Calibrate button the the Galil Hardhat window:

The Swope-GUI uses the known distances from the Open position to calculate the new positions and writes them to the shared preferences file:

  /Users/Shared/Library/Preferences/edu.carnegiescience.obs.Swope.plist
  Keys: wheel1_positions, wheel2_positions

If, for some reason, the distances between filter positions have changed, please do the following (using wheel-1):

Open the Galil Hardhat window
Move wheel-1 by hand to the Open position and press the Update button. Write down the encoder value in the row labeled 'W1'.
Repeat the previous step for positions '1' through '5'.
Close the Swope-GUI
Delete the shared preferences file.
Note: this resets all preferences of the Swope-GUI to their defaults.
Edit the file 'Swope.app/Contents/Resources/wheel1.xml' and enter the values you measured earlier.
Start the Swope-GUI (ensure that all settings on the Configuration window are correct) and verify that the GUI is able to find all wheel positions correctly.
Please notify (birk AT obs DOT carnegiescience DOT edu) with a list of the changes you made; thanks.

Calibrate a Guider to the Telescope/Instrument Axis

If there is a consistent problem finding guide stars please follow these steps:

CSET the Swope telescope
Initialize the guider probes

If there are still problems finding guide stars it might be necessary to re-calibrate the guider probe center:

CSET the Swope telescope
Initialize the guider probes
Move the guider probe until you find the bright star in the exact center of the guider camera field of view
Open the Galil Hardhat window
Select the appropriate guider probe ('1' or '2')

Press the Calibrate button
This writes the new probe center to the shared preferences file

  /Users/Shared/Library/Preferences/edu.carnegiescience.obs.Swope.plist
  Keys: GuiderTeleAxisX1, GuiderTeleAxisY1
        GuiderTeleAxisX2, GuiderTeleAxisY2

Please notify (birk AT obs DOT carnegiescience DOT edu) with a list of the changes you made; thanks.

2014-08-27, Christoph C. Birk, Carnegie Observatories