Developers guide

Control of the sliding roof, discussed in more detail in 2.10, gives the telescope rapid access to

any part of the sky. The building also contains a control room, adjacent to the telescope, where

much of the computer equipment is located.

2.3 Mistral

Mistral

is an Intel desktop computer running the GNU Linux operating system which runs the

majority of the software used to control the telescope and other devices inside the building.

Currently mistral is a 450MHz Intel Pentium III, 384MB Ram, with approximately 100GB of hard

drive space. It is also equipped with a SCSI CD/RW burner, and an IDE DVD Burner

, primarily for

distributing and archiving image data.

Mistral is part of a local 10Mbit subnet shared by all of the Ethernet devices at the site. 2 x 64

Kbit/s ISDN lines provide a gateway to the Internet.

2.3.1 Serial modem

A standard 56K modem is installed to provide a Phone Alert System, proposed and partially

implemented in [ 55 ]. This phone alert system is ultimately designed to place a voice call to a

qualified technician in an emergency situation and provide them with specific information.

2.3.2 USB sound card

Mistral is also interfaced to a Telex Pro USB sound card. Designed to provide voice messages to

warn people nearby of activity at the site. The remote operation capabilities of the APT, and the

fact that the control room is likely to be unattended, presents several safety issues. Unexpected

roof operation, for example, could cause serious injury to unaware bystanders.

Software is currently in place to produce these audio messages, however, additional hardware is

required to provide sufficient volume for the system to actually be effective.

2.3.3 Watchdog

A PCI PC Watchdog, from [ 3 ], board is installed in mistral to monitor the PC’s temperature and

software to provide maximum availability. The watchdog device driver also routinely attempts to

poll the card, in order to prevent the card from assuming the operating system has failed and

subsequently reboot the computer.

2.4 Telescope

The telescope, shown in Figure 2-2, is a wide-field, 0.5m

iii

Schmidt

optical telescope fitted with

a CCD camera for imaging.

mistral.anu.edu.au: by convention, all hostnames within the Research School of Astronomy and

Astrophysics at ANU begin with the letter m

currently only utilised as a CDR-RW driver due to device driver limitations

iii

50cm aperture

Schmidt is a standard telescope design