Arcetri Technical Reports 9/1995

ARCOS - Arcetri correlator spectrometer Stato del software di controllo dello strumento

G. Comoretto

Osservatorio Astrofisico di Arcetri

Abstract

The Arcetri correlation spectrometer (ARCOS) is now near completion. The software is however still in the design phase, with some main building blocks completed.  Among these there is  a configuration package, described in a previous report, a device driver to control the more hardware specific functions, a library for performing various hardware related functions, and a user interface library based on the X11 Motif widget set.

The software is based on a client-server structure, with three interacting programs.  The hardware is controlled by a server program running in the VME board inside the instrument. This program provides services (antenna pointing, correlation, instrument setup, total power measurements) to a client program, that drives the observation. The user interface is handled by a third program, that receives commands either from a graphic user interface or from a schedule, and dispatches them to the client program.

This report describes the overall philosophy of the control softeware, and the details of the building blocks already completed.