Expected costs: 1 student, 1-2 weeks

Profile: image processing, C++, Subversion

I have meteorite detection code for RTS2, however it is not integrated in RTS2. The task of the student would be to take the code, merge it with current RTS2-related pipelines, fix bugs and run it on our widefiled CCDs.

The work may be extended so that it would take advantage of the WCS (pixel→world) calibration to provide direct 3D resolved result if observed from more than a single camera.

Will be provided by Pi-of-the Sky, expected to be integrated by end of 2008.

Expected costs: 1-3 students, 2-6 months

Profile: GTK, PyGTK ideal, XML-RPC, Subversion, GUI design, user documentation

For description of XML-RPC interface, please see XML-RPC wiki page. Also see description of current GUI there.

As astronomers are strange beasts, it must be multi-platform (at least Windows + Linux, Mac highly recommended). We do not expect it will be feasible to code all as Web application - standalone application is preferred. The application might integrate various programmes (image display,..) with SAMP. We expect various team members will pick different areas.

What we expect:

• configurable interface to display (using various fancy displays - bars, gauges,..) and change variables, display events, notification and warnings, and display and modify scheduling database.
• 3D telescope visualisation, with interface to describe various system attached to the telescope and describe its status, failures etc..
• plotting of history of selected variables (temperature,..), similar to what Google provides for finance or Meteo provides for meteo data display
• display observations, images related to observations,..

Expected costs: 1-3 students, 2-6 months

Profile: Google Web Toolkit, Web interface design user documentation, Subversion

There is a prototype implementation of RTS2 web, which have some limited functionalities. I would like to see extension of this piece of software which should result in usable and useful WWW interface for RTS2.

Expected costs: 1 student, 3 months

Profile: computer science theory, C++, Subversion

We went through an interesting history none → SOAP → XML-RPC regarding external access to RTS2. I just recently read through Atom specification, which is widely used by Google (so that was not XML-RPC - my mistake) and do not know if that is what we wanted. I like few characteristics of Atom, but dislike few others (apparent lack of C++ library to handle Atom requests is most probably the most serious one). The tasks of this mainly theoretics work is in comparing those various possibilities, try/use simple implementation with RTS2 and compare them.

Better scheduling

Advanced scripting

We need to improve database design. Current summary is given at there. Database was originally developed as a quick hack, and the project grows of the original scope. It is clear that we will need to improve our current design. The work should provide summary of a current state, and should try to draw a new design.