Mount's clients

The shell and GTK+ clients are provided by the nightview package. The shell client is named telescope and GTK+ client is xmove.

telescope

The main utility to control of the telescope is telescope. It's command line driven. No any config files are supposed. Telescope provide setting or getting many important characteristics of the dome, telescope or date. Transparently adds support for the local or Internet connection. The on-line help is provided with invoking it without parameters:


Telescope mount position control 0.0.0
Use: telescope [set | get] [options, values]

         get:    (specify nothing, one or more option)
                 -ra   print Right Ascension in degrees
                 -dec  print Declination in degrees
                 -a    print Azimuth (180 deg = north)
                 -z    print Altitude
                 -ha   print Hour Angle
                 -jd   print Julian date
                 -status   print status of moving telescope

         set:    (every option needs additional parameter(s))
                 -coo RA Dec  set the Equatorial coordinates in degrees
                 -cal RA Dec calibrate the coordinates (degrees)
                 +ra   add value to Right Ascension in degrees
                 +dec  add value to Declination in degrees
                 -vra   set velocity of Right Ascension in degrees per second
                 -vdec  set velocity of Declination in degrees per seconds
                 stop    stop movine (any direction)
                 -c on   start clock-machine
                 -c off  stop clock-machine
                 -c park          park telescope

                 -host address:port Internet address of server, "localhost:7666"
                 -q don't print the telescope status during setting of telescope

Two main modes are supported. The get mode for getting all or specified characteristics and set mode to set and calibrate values. The key set or get should be used to identify mode. The additional parameters can follow.

Status of telescope

The get options switch to get mode. Than user can specify one, more or nothing option and required values will be print. The format of the output list is list of items, each


name = value

where name is a name (can include spaces) of the characteristics and value as a float number. If any parameter from set (jd, ra, dec...) follows the parameter as printed without leading name and a equal sign. Only float is printed.

When you specify the get option on the command line without others parameters all of characteristics will be printed:


debian:~/nightview/mount$ telescope get
Right Ascension =   0.000
Declination     =   0.000
Azimuth          = 156.238
Altitude        = -37.523
Hour angle      =  17.363
Dome            = 111.693
Julian date     = 2452372.3623
Siderical time  =  10.000

The one (or more) parameters can be added:


debian:~/nightview/mount$ telescope get -jd
2452372.364

Calibration of coordinates

The setting of various coordinates is more exciting. The coordinates are calibrated by using the -cal (abbreviation of calibrate) options follows by two float numbers meaning the current coordinates. This command print 1 on success and 0 in failure and return code is set. For example, you cantered telescope to some bright star by hand and you need tell to server when the coordinates of this star are the current. This options will be frequently used at start of observation.


debian:~/nightview/mount$ telescope set -cal 10 10
1

Setting of telescope

When the coordinates were calibrated, we can point the telescope to some interesting object with -coo option (abbreviation of coordinate) followed by the two float numbers as required coordinates again. This command print 1 on success and 0 in failure and return code is set. The motors will be switched on and telescope will be moving. The utility prints text pseudo-progress bars when telescope is moving, with switch -q this behaviour is off-ed and this routine exits immediately.


debian:~/nightview/mount$ telescope set -coo 11 11
1

The moving velocity in both axes should be separately set before any moving is executed with parameters -vra (velocity RA) and -vdec (velocity dec) followed by float numbers. This velocity is directly passed to low-level subroutines already described. This parameters should be used together with -coo option. When velocity isn't specified is set to 1 degrees per second.


debian:~/nightview/mount$ telescope set -vra 1 -vdec -coo 11 1
1

The relative difference can be specified too. Then use switches +ra and +dec (+ mean addition to current coordinates). The differences in degrees will be add to current coordinates. The moving velocity can be specified, otherwise is set to 1 deg per second. The utility prints text pseudo-progress bars when telescope is moving, with switch -q this behaviour is off-ed and this routine exits immediately.

Emergency stop

The move of telescope can be interrupted with the option stop at any time. The command can be useful when the any failure is appear. The coordinate of the telescope are undefined after this command so the new calibration is required. Practicaly, the position of the telescope will close to coordinates reported by the daemon because, the mount server continuously save a current position with a small time grid.


debian:~/nightview/mount$ telescope set stop

Clock

The switch -c followed value from a set (on, off, park) controls the clock. The option on switch up the clock, off stops the clock and park move telescope to park position (azimuth 0, height 90). This command print 1 on success and 0 in failure and return code is set.


debian:~/nightview/mount$ telescope set -c on
debian:~/nightview/mount$ telescope set -c off

This utility connect the local socket when the option -host is not used. If you can connect to a remote server than you should use the -host option followed by the Internet address of the server.

Environmental variables

The telescope utility gets information from environmental variables. The command line options replaces the environmental setting in general.

MOUNT_HOST variable sets the 'host' option commonly for all shell utilities. If variable is unset this variable is defaulted to file:///tmp/.mount_shock (local connection).

Example. The command


export MOUNT_HOST="http://my.telescope.net"

will set the host with camera conected to http://my.telescope.net.

xmove

Xmove is a graphical front end to the telescope utility. It requires no options. It is invoked by


gtknightview [-h|--help] [-i image] [-]

Main window and control panel of xmove. The basic description is included.