Subsystems of SUSI

The cart slews at ~5m/min

Ensure LEDs are on otherwise the  limit switches don't work.
Has a nasty habit of regularly dieing due to RTP read failures IF its
electronics are not cooled. Direct a fan onto its electronics box. 
Simply switch off-on at north el rack, reset (red button below) & restart.
 May need to unplug/replug or power cycle at back of rack too.

Aligning and focussing the apd fibres. [MI]

The field-of-view of the fibres is roughly 20" on the sky. This means in
principle that the alignment is not critical: the full PSF including the
first airy ring is about 10" at 900 nm, giving a maximum tolerance of
about +/- 5" on the sky. This kind of leeway is necessary as the
absolute aiming position of the tip/tilt system is dependant on
dispersion and spectral type (can change by up to 1" or so), and
experience has shown that alignment is not completely stable over
time. The difficult part of aligning the fibres is ensuring that the focus
is also correct, and this cannon be done easily by simply measuring the
amount of starlight coming in to the fibres (although possible in
principle). So, here is another (better?) technique for fibre alignment:

1) Get the MAPPIT laser set up on Peter's fibre-alignement rig (a short
piece of optical rail, hopefully with some/all of the following
components already mounted and sitting in the optics lab). Three
componenets are required: the MAPPIT laser, the fibre holder and a short
focal length lens (one marked '20' on the lens holder is perfect).
2) Take this set up to the roof of the optical enclosure next to the apds.
Unplug one of the fibres from the its apd and plug it into the fibre
holder.
3) Align the set up so that the laser is focussed on the fibre head. This
is quite tricky, and you can tell the alignment is correct when the
bright scattered laser spot on the fibre face mostly dissapears.
4) Get off the roof, and check that the laser is bright when it comes out
of the other end of the fibre.
5) Use the mirror 'M' on the red table to reflect this beam accross the
room. The beam edges should diverge by 6 mm over 5 m due to the angular
size of the fibre core. If not, adjust the fibre focus (the large ring to
the back of the fibre mount) until this condition is reached. This is not
particularly accurate, and I'd love it if someone else has a better
idea, but the beam quality isn't really all thaat great...
6) Turn the red table laser on (put appropriate slides etc in place) and
with a roughly 10 mm aperture in, adjust the West-Central OPLC mirrors to
get the laser spots onto the target at the large BRT.
7) Turn this laser off, take mirror 'M'/slides shutters out and align the
beam coming out of the fibre with the same target. Keep the same 10mm
aperture in. The pattern on the targets will not be bright (it's a
divergent beam after all), but should be brightest in the centre. Move the
fibre face using the large knobs on the side and top of the mount to align
the brightest bit of the pattern up with the target. If you can get this
right to within 5mm, then this corresponds to 2'' on the sky and is
adequate.
8) Repeat with the other fibre.

CCD Cooler
Things to consider:
1. Check that the coolant level is OK.  There is a large screw-cap on
the top of the unit (you need a ladder to inspect this).  The fluid
level should cover the cooling coils.  If the level is low just add water.
                                                                                
2. The temperature setting might be incorrect.  This needs occasional
adjustment due to seasonal changes.  It may be set too low.  The idea is
to keep the water temperature *slightly* below the ambient temperature
in the instrument enclosure.  If it is set too low the cooler has a lot
of work to do and more importantly there is a risk of condensation if
the temperature of the pipes, etc., fall below the dew point.

Complicated...but needn't be!
Cold start: Leave ~2hr to settle
Warm start: Leave ~15mins to settle
 If it fails to lock, ie. you see red and/or orange lights:
  *Switch off/on at north electronics rack
  Now the system goes through an approx 10min warm-up period.
  During this time do:
   If needle is to far right <=> turn pot CW
   If needle is to far left  <=> turn pot CCW
  Repeat steadily and with care as required to keep needle in
  'control range' until all LEDs go out. Hopefully the needle now
  remains in the 'control range'. If not repeat from *.
The residual 'background jitter' visible on the oscilloscopes is due to the
control-room air-con unit. The fan outside the building causes it.

Overview:

Usage:
Mikes notes are at /mirror/home/mireland/latex/scheduler.tex [or .ps]
My additions to Mike's notes:
 a/ load [script file] is now implemented. Click 'go' to run the script.
 b/ foto Takes photometry files: north and south and dark. Does all
     necessary shutter and siderostat commands.
 c/ for fs need to start 200-300 micron below expected position of fringes
     to allow pellicle time to move away before scan starts.
 d/ Any command can be entered in 'insert command' box. It is executed immediately
    or as soon as the present active command is completed.

Usage:
1. Get the system set for observing: all servers and clients open, optics aligned, sids 
    running, etc
2. Go to target star and do a refin alignment with the PHP
3. scheduler & in an arthur window
4. Create a targetname.sched file (or do this before starting alignment). These are 
   stored in /export/snert/data/schedules.
    They should look something like:
      acq 3699            acquire an alignment star
      align               and do align procedure
      hrf 3699            now do scans on HR3699 and follow with foto(metry) files
      hrf 3884
      hrf 4114
      hrf 3884
      hrf 3685
      hrf 3884
      hrf 3699
      load ../schedules/lcar.sched      and now reload this file to repeat

    A cycle takes 40-50 mins if everything goes smoothly
    ie. ~5-6mins per star
    To stop simply hit 'stop' in scheduler whenever you wish.
5. Type load targetname.sched into scheduler
6. 'Single Command' step through acq and align then hit go. 
7. The scheduler already knows about
    sids, fs parameters, the data directory, file number and scans parameter.
   Now it just cycles through the sched file.
8. Note: To clear a .sched file from the scheduler just do:
    load ../schedules/empty.sched (which is empty as its name suggests)
    and hit 'single command' twice. This saves closing/reopening scheduler.
 --------------------------------------------------------------

The following is the old method we used before scheduler ran everything in case you need it.
 When scan set ends...
 Scheduler starts new astromod
 Meanwhile acquire north on StartrackNG. Wait for sids to slew to star then grab and centre
 Wobble2 will close loop automatically if 'tasc' is toggled in wobble2 window and pointing is 
  good
 Acquire south on STNG. Wobble2 closes auto.
 Move pellicle to park  - but ensure n&s wobble remain closed
   s might open when pellicle passes.
   Could go to control|widefield to recentre/reclose
 Scheduler will search and find fringes
   If not found do 'fs start end speed' [set start and end sensibly or -1500 +1500 if 
    first time, and speed=10 for slow, reliable search.] or try sfo if you know where
   the fringes are.
 Record log sheet data from Merlin

Recommendations:
-Do nfoto, sfoto, dfoto between between each star if necessary
-Keep an eye on the no of scans. There is no obvious 'finished' signal.
-May need to hit 'stop' before 'go' sometimes
-Photometry:
 Manual photometry - nfoto: smsin, nmsout, maintain tracking on sids and OPLC
                     dfoto: smsout, nmsout, maintain tracking on OPLC, stop tracking on sids
                            start set a few seconds after servos open.
    Do ~100 scans for each d,b,sfoto set with long scan.
    Do ~400 scans for each d,b,sfoto set with short scan???
 --------------------------------------------------------------

Problems:
-Scheduler has time-outs on gaining a sid/wobbler lock and on finding fringes.
  But it will just wait for you to manually reacquire on the sids, re-lock the servos
  or scan for fringes. After completing each of these manual operations simply hit 'go'
  and scheduler will take over from where it paused. Woo hoo!:)
-If fringecon finds false fringes or looses the fringes during a scan then
  on fringecon do:
  stop  (scheduler will remain in "waiting for scan set to end" mode)
  start continuous, fs or sfo, start scan
  At end of scan scheduler will save as correct run no and continue as normal.

-Wobble2 looses star: go to control|widefield and move sids manually
  Siderostats fail to slew to target. Just hit 'Track' in sidcongtk   

To record pointing data do spd in sidcon of choice.
This records data in /usr/local/susi/tmp/?n?  where eg ?n?= s3s direction-sid-periscope
But move this data (to, say, that nights data directory) as the next spd will overwrite it.
To stop recording data do cpf.

-Fringecon can send offsets of up to 20 microns in standard modes
 (probably not a good idea to set long scan damping to less than 3 seconds
 now that I think about this), but this should be a gentle ramp
 over 80 ms and I think should only produce errors of about 0.5 um.[MJI]

son
 automatically turns the feedback to pathcomp on if you know the fringes
 are there, even if the signal-to-noise hasn't reached 5.0 yet.

For normal observing with the long scan locked on increase the damping time
to keep the signal-to-noise high (certainly higher than 3.0 in general).
On faint stars this might mean using damping=20s.

Short/Long Scan
The short and long scan require different parameters.
The short scan is useful in good and average seeing. It will improve the data
quality by a factor of ~2 (in one run you get 4000 short or 1000 long scans in
the same time). It might be worth finding the fringes with the long scan then
moving to the short scan.

To change to the short scan set (or check) the following:
 in fringecon:
  svd 0.4  (this is the default for both long and short scans)
  svg 16   (this is the big change - default is 1.2)
 in fringecon_client set (from the menus):
  lut scan35f_256
  damp 5          (The ~normal damping time)
  filter 0.7 0.08 (default)
 in scheduler set:
  scans 4000 50

To log opcon data:
Use the menu item to toggle opcon logging on/off.
The opcon.log file is in ~snert/data/temp, which is also /export/snert/data/temp.
You must to manually copy this file (to the data directory, say) after logging
opcon data. Reopening the log overwrites the old data.

Astromod
Do: astromod xxxx ny sz n/s  eg. astromod 1922 n4 s1 s

cron is a program that runs jobs at predefiened times.
crontab -l lists the jobs
crontab -e edits the jobs
eg.
 MAILTO=ande
 04 08 * *  Mon echo "Copying web files to arthur"
 05 08 * *  *   /usr/bin/scp -pqrC /import/www/restricted/susi/* snert@arthur:public_html/susi

 min  hr  dom mon  dow
 *     *   *   *    *  command to be executed
 -     -    -    -    -
 |     |     |     |     |
 |     |     |     |     +----- day of week (1 - 7) (monday = 1)
 |     |     |     +------- month (1 - 12)
 |     |     +--------- day of month (1 - 31)
 |     +----------- hour (0 - 23)
 +------------- min (0 - 59)

The system is controlled from arthur, gaheris, gareth and peleas.
Each runs different software. If you reboot arthur you then need to 
reboot each of the others

To reboot them:
 ssh name
 su & root_password
 /sbin/reboot
 exit
 exit

To shutdown do:
 su & root_password
 /sbin shutdown now
 turn them off
 [Is this correct??]

There is a set of Neutral Density Filters located just in front of the
 alignment lasers.
Open these with the 'Filters' icon on ROCS. This oens a Putty terminal.
Writing in this window is weird. First hit x to close window - then answer no.
Now when typing line-feeds are bad.
If you dont get an error returned things are working correctly.
Commands are: 
 pos=?
   where ?=1 -> ND?
    etc
Use pos=4 for autocollimating

The Weather Monitor provides external and tunnel conditions.
Do xrun_weathermon on peleas.

 write here