RTS2 Wiki

Technical issues regarding our installations at BOOTES-1 in El Arenosillo.

Our installations include five imaging systems in total: BOOTES-1A, BOOTES-1B, BOOTES-1ASM, External webcam and internal webcam watching BOOTES-1B. We have two domes, first, older and recently reconstructed covers B-1A and B-1ASM. The newer and larger dome hosts BOOTES-1B and it's webcam.

The mount needs to be restarted ocassionally. Primary symptom is the mount beeping, but that cannot be heard over the webcam. Typically it is recognized by Motor stil slewing but command needs it stopped message in RTS2 log.

Solution is rather straightforward – power cycling the mount. To achieve this on distance, one should typically watch the webcam (http://b1-axis-in/ within a browser running via X-windows from arae.iaa.es), while issuing the command dome1.teloff in the rts2-mon runnin from iam1b. The mount LED should indicate that the mount is off. Then dome1.telon should start the mount. Check if it parks automatically, and if it does not, do it manually.

NOTE: The switch is commom with the Bootes-1A Alta CCD, which will be also power cycled if you do this. Therefore, you should also consider stopping the alta driver before and restarting it after the former action.

The camera driver has a bug, which causes it to hang from time to time. The following sequence should bring it back.

1. log in to vader
2. killall rts2-camd-alta
3. ssh iam1b
4. rts2-mon
5. dome1.teloff
6. wait few seconds
7. dome1.telon
8. quit the monitor, get back to vader, wait ~10seconds so that the camera comes up
9. /etc/init.d/rts2 start
10. check in rts2-mon if the camera is Okay.

NOTE: as this switch is common with Bootes-1B mount, you should check the mount as well. If observing, consider paring the mount in advance to avoid possible problems while the mount is being reset.

RAIN SENSORS

There are two Eigenbrodt IRSS 88 precipitation detectors, connected separately to the dome control inlets (fordostoj). The northern detector is connected only to Bootes-1B inlet (no. 5, 0x10), while the southern one is connected to both units in parallel (at B-1A it is inlet no.1, i.e. 0x01, at B-1B it is no.6, i.e. 0x20).

These detectors are supposed to protect us as the last instance rain protection, therefore are wired as low in the hardware as possible. In future, we should even consider the blocking (closing) the dome at hardware layer - the new state machine being used at Bootes-1A is clearly able to accept such an inlet.

The northern (nearer to the domes) sensor seems to have a malfunctioning DEU (drop evaluation unit), although the drops (well, screwdriver strikes) get detected well at the frame, the DEU does not react. The unit should be revised soon.