TCS/Instrument Communication

We currently need to manually setup the communication between the instrument control computer and the TCS. This will allow pertinent telescope telemetry to be placed into the image headers.

On Olive:

The ACE Socket Server starts whenever the ACE RCS is brought up. Make sure another Socket Server is not running before starting the program. (It may be minimized on the bottom toolbar). From the main toolbar on the ACE RCS select Network => Start Socket Server. A smaller window will pop up and should read 0.0.0.0

On Rust(if using Mosaic) or Taupe(if using S2KB):

• In an xgterm window type vncviewer -shared taupe:3
• It will prompt you for a password. It's the same password used to log into the computer - look at the whiteboard.
• The GWC desktop window above should pop up with 5 windows in it: Taupe GWC GWC Router, an xterm and 3 telemetry windows.
• In the xterm window you should see streams of numbers (no words) streaming by. If so, the TCS/Instrument connection is up.
• If nothing is streaming by, check to see if the ITCS program is running (if it is running you should get a itcs> prompt).
• If you see a taupe% prompt instead of the itcs> prompt type the following at the taupe% prompt:    start-itcs
• This will start the ITCS program. You should see a lot of information streaming by. Near the bottom you should see "connect: Connected to host olive port..."
• In your Socket Server window on Olive you should now see "Connected"
• Now type tcs in the xterm window in the VNCViewer desktop 
  • A stream of numbers should be returned.
  • On Olive you should see "TelData". If so the Instrument/TCS connection is up.
• Enter timer 1500 in the xterm window on Rust or timer 5000 in the xterm window on Taupe. The above stream of numbers should keep scrolling by every 1.5 seconds.

  When using Mosaic, a good check to see if the TCS/Instrument connection is indeed alive is to check the TCS status on the MCCD Configuration GUI. If there is a green check mark beside the words TCS then the link is alive. If instead there is a red X, then the connection needs to be restarted.

See the TCS/Instrument Communication Troubleshooting Flow Chart if you are having problems.

If you continue to have problems with the communications you can set a parameter in telpars on your Data Acquisition computer that ignores this connection. If you set this parameter you will not have the pertinent information in your headers. Type telpars in your Data Acquisition window on Taupe or Rust. Enter test in the telescope field. To return to automatically getting this information into your headers, enter kp09m in the telescope field.