Data Taker Software
Main GUI | Menu Bar | Exposure Palette | Take Darks
The data taking software, sharcs_fe, runs on the computer
covert and is started by typing sharcs_fe at the command
line. This will open two windows, an xterminal with messages (which
can be ignored unless there are problems) and the GUI shown in Figure
1 below. Exposure parameters, such as exposure time and number of
coadds are controlled from this GUI, as well as the status of
exposures in progress.
The top section (just below the menu bar, which will
be discussed later), is the status section. This section will update
with exposure status, progress, and any messages or errors, as well as
displaying the elapsed and remaining exposure times. When an exposure
is not in progress (as shown in Figure 1), the status area will be
green with the first line of text showing the Object name and
Secs: is the seconds remaining for the exposure (in this case
0, as there is no exposure in progress). The next line of text will
display any messages concerning status or errors. Also, to the far
right will be displayed to total amount of elapsed exposure time
(including overhead, but not the about 12 seconds of time it takes to
write the FITS file to the data directory, /data/sharcs/.) The bottom
line of text will display the name of the exposure in progress or the
last exposure completed if an exposure is not in progress.
When an exposure is in progress (see Figure 2a), the green bar will
advance as the exposure progresses, as well as display status updates
on how many reads and coadds have been completed. Secs: will
display the number of seconds remaining for the exposure (including
overhead) and immediately below it will be the elapsed time (in
seconds) for the exposure. The exposure, when completed, will be
written to the file name listed at the bottom of the status panel.
When the exposure is completed, it takes about 12 seconds to write the
file to the data directory, /data/sharcs/. That time is designated
with a blue background for the status panel (Figure 2b).
Below the status region, some helpful information is listed for the
observer's reference. This information will be updated any time the
exposure parameters are updated.
Min ITime= is the minimum exposure time
per coadd allowed with the current detector configuration. For most
programs, this will be 1.46 seconds (as shown in Figure 1). If the
detector is windowed to a small region (refer to Window GUI below),
the exposure time may be less, e.g. 0.11 seconds for a 100x100 pixel
region.
Actual= is the actual exposure time in seconds for the
exposure. One may enter any desired exposure time, but the actual
exposure time will be an integral number times the Min ITime. The
software will automatically take the entered Exposure time and figure
out the maximum Actual exposure time that fits in the entered Exposure
time. The Actual exposure time is always less than or equal to the
entered Exposure time.
Total= displays (in seconds) the actual exposure time plus
overhead from the number of reads plus the time it takes to write the
file to disk. Note that the Actual and Total exposure times are for a
single coadd and will not be adjusted if Coadds is greater than 1.
The middle section of the sharcs_fe GUI (see Figure 1 above), is the
one that observers will interact with most, as this is where exposure
parameters are specified and exposures can be started.
Exposure time may be entered in Seconds or Milliseconds, as
specified by the radio buttons immediately above the Exposure entry
box. The default is seconds. When a new exposure time is entered the
background of the entry box will turn yellow and it will not be used
until the Set button is pressed. When Set is clicked,
the new exposure time will be displayed to the right of
Exposure and the background of the entry box will return to its
default white color.
NReads is the number of reads of the detector. As displayed in
Figure 1, its Set button is greyed out because the default mode
for the GUI is Auto Mode where the appropriate number of reads
for the dectector is calculated based on the entered exposure time (up
to a maximum of 16 reads). The default mode is useful for the vast
majority of observing programs. Those wishing to use non-standard
number of reads can go to the File menu (see Figure 6) and
select Normal Mode to enable the Set button for the
Number of reads. To return to the default settings for NReads, select
Auto Mode from the File menu. Normal Mode is displayed in
Figure 3. Behavior of the Set button is the same as for setting
the Exposure.
NCoadds is the number of coadds for each exposure. This number must
be an integer 1 or greater. The Set button behaves the same as for the
Exposure entry.
Obs # is the observation number and will be part of the file
name. ShARCS data files are stored in the directory /data/sharcs/.
File names are sXXXX.fits where XXXX is the observation number
prepended with zeros to make a 4 digit number.
All of the above exposure parameters (plus many others, see FITS header keywords for more informaiton) are
written into the FITS file header.
One may enter a number of parameters then set them all at once using
the Set All button. If a mistake was made, one can clear the
entry fields by clicking the Clear All button.
Once the exposure parameters are set, one starts the exposure by pressing
the Expose button.
If one needs to abort an exposure (due to improper paramter settings,
change in weather, or other issue), the Abort button can be
used. When one clicks on Abort a menu is displayed (see Figure
4 ). The options are No, Abort Now, After
Read, After Group, or After Coadd. No will cancel the abort (in case
Abort was clicked by accident). Abort now will stop the exposure
immediately. After Read will stop the exposure after the current read
is done. After Group will stop the exposure after the current group
of reads is completed. After Coadd will stop the exposure after the
current coadd is done. In all cases a file is written to disk, though
the value of the data from the aborted exposure will be suspect if not
stopped after a group or coadd.
The bottom section of the sharcs_fe GUI (see Figure 1 above) allows
the observer to enter their Name, Program, and the Science Target's
name or identifier.
Observer: The observer's names or observers' names. Can be up to 64
regular characters. This information will be written to the OBSERVER
FITS header keyword in your data file. The Set button behaves
the same as for the Exposure time entry. The Hide... button
will hide the entry box to prevent accidental changes during the
night. Once pressed the Hide... button changes to
Show... so that one can display the entry box again.
Program: The Program is any text one choses to enter (up to 64 regular
characters) that designates the science program. The Set and Hide... buttons work
as for the Observer entry box. This information is written in the
FITS data file keyword PROGRAM.
Object: The Object name can be entered (up to 64 regular characters).
The Set and Hide... buttons work
as for the Observer entry box. This information is written in the
FITS data file keyword OBJECT.
LogNote: An electronic log is kept of all significant ShaneAO
actions and ShARCS exposures and scripts. The log file is saved with
the data in the data directory /data/sharcs/ and named
saolog_YYYY-MM-DD.log. To add a comment to the log, type it in and
press the Set button.
The men bar at the top of the sharcs_fe GUI (as shown in Figure 1
above, and below in Figure 5), allows one to reconfigure the GUI,
ShARCS configuration files, bring up auxillary GUIs and displays
status messages.
The File menu has a number of options for changing how the GUI is displayed.
Log... has not been implemented yet, but eventually will bring up the planned electronic log for ShaneAO and ShARCS.
Resize sets the GUI back to its default size.
Auto Mode displays the exposure parameter entry fields for
typical operations, where the number of reads for the Fowler sampling
is set automatically (up to a maximum of 16 reads) based on the
exposure time.
Normal Mode is the same as Auto Mode except that the number of
reads, NReads, for the Fowler sampling is set manually by the
observer. Note that if one sets the number to reads to be more than
can be covered by the exposure time, an error message will be
generated when one tries to start an exposure.
Advanced Mode shows all the available exposure parameters and
is the mode that must be used if one wants to do up-the-ramp sampling
for the read out of the detector. Figure 7 shows the Advanced Mode options for
exposure configuration.
In Advanced Mode, the readout mode may be selected with the
Mode button. Mode options are Single, CDS (Correlated Double
Sampling), MCDS (Fowler sampled multiple reads) or UTR (Up-The-Ramp
sampling). When in CDS mode, the NGroups and NReads fields are greyed
out, as they are not options when doing CDS. In MCDS mode NGroups is
greyed out, as the mode requires NGroups to be two. Note, nothing gets
greyed out in Single mode, though most parameters (except NResets and
NCoadds) are irrelevant.
Exposure, NReads, NCoadds, and Obs # are
identical to the Normal Mode settings. The additional options are
described below.
NGroups is the number of groups of reads to perform. For
example, in MCDS mode, there will be 2 groups, one group of reads at
the beginning of the exposure and another at the end. In UTR mode
NGroups will be the number of groups of reads during the exposure.
NIgnored is the number of reads to ignore between the
NGroup reads.
Resets is the number of detector resets performed before the exposure
begins. Default value is 1, but more may be done, though this adds overhead
to each exposure.
Settings are sufficiently complicated, that errors are relatively
common for those new to using the Advanced Mode. However, errors in
the exposure settings should generate an error message when the
Expose button is pressed, so they can be identified quickly.
An example of settings for an UTR exposure is ??.
The rightmost item in the menu bar is a status message. Normally the
message is routine, such as "Connected" or "Fits writing complete" (as
in Figure 1 above) with a grey background. However, critical messages
will be displayed with a red background alerting one to a problem.
For example, in Figure 5 one can see the red background with the
message "Lost Server". In most cases the observer will not be able to
solve the problems on their own, so contact a telescope operator or
support astronomer for assistance.
The Windows menu allows one to bring up auxiliary GUIs required
for ShARCS setup, operations, and status reports.
thi
Exp Palette: TheExposure Palette is a window displaying the
exposure times taken since the last clearing of the palette. Clicking
on an exposure time in the exposure palette will copy those parameters
to the main sharcs_fe GUI. This is a convenient way of selecting
exposure parameters if one has a few different setups one wishes to
use during the night. It also tracks how many exposures where taken
with each set of parameters so that one may take dark frames at the
end of the night with the Dark GUI.
The first column, Time, is the exposure time in seconds.
Note that exposure times shorter than 1.5 seconds will show up in the
exposure palette, but will fail if the detector is not windowed to an appropriate size for the shorter
exposure time to be valid.
Take Darks is a GUI that enables taking dark exposures at the
exposure times listed in the Exposure Palette.
The top of the GUI shows which positions the filters are currently
in. If they are in the dark positions, the backgrounds will be green,
otherwise yellow as a warning that they are not in the proper
positions for taking Darks. Move the filters to the Dark positions by
clicking on the Set Filters button in the upper righthand
corner. When filters are moving the button will turn red. Once
filters are in place the button will revert to the default grey color.
(Note, there is currently a bug in the program and it stays red in
color, do not be concerned).
The main section of the GUI summarizes the information from the
Exposure Palette, indicating the number of exposures (Count),
exposure time in seconds (Exp Time), number of Reads,
Resets, and Coadds.
To take darks for a given exposure configuration, enter the number to
exposures to take for each exposure configuration in the Takes
column. Please try to keep the total time to do all darks under two
hours. The total estimated time to take the requested darks is listed
at the bottom of the exposures table. If darks will go beyond 8am,
please email mh-techs@ucolick.org to let the observatory staff know
that darks will still be in progress when the day crew comes in and
please also include at what time the dark script will be completed.
As darks are taken by the Take Darks script, the Taken column numbers
will increment to indicate how many exposures have been completed for
each exposure time. An estimate of the total time in seconds
(including overhead) to perform the requested number of darks is in
the final column, Total Time.
Before setting the Takes for each exposure configurations, it is
advisable to click the Reload button to update the exposure
information. This will make sure that all exposure times in the
Exposure Palette are listed in the Take Darks GUI. The Reload button will
also reset all Takes and Taken values to zero.
For convenience one can set all Takes (e.g. 10 dark exposures at each
exposure time) by typing the desired number into the entry box near
the bottom of the GUI and pressing the Set All Takes button.
One can then manually edit any Takes to a different number, if desired
(e.g. in Figure 10 all takes were set to 10, then the first exposure
configuration was manually set to 0).
To reset the number of exposures taken for each exposure time (i.e.,
set Count to 0 for all exposure times), click the Clear Counts
button. This is sometimes desirable to do at the beginning of each
night so one is tracking only new exposures taken that day, rather
than including the previous night's exposures.
One can also clear the Exposure Palette of all information by clicking
Delete Exp Info. This is often done by the staff when
configuring the system for a new observer so they start with a blank
exposure palette.
Observers should not need this window, however, it is documented here
for completeness and Figure 11 displays what the GUI should look like
during normal operations. Note that the full AsicCfg is
C:\startup\SHARCSColdControlConfig.xml and the full AsicHost is
stealthie.ucolick.org. These parameters should not be changed, as that could
render ShARCS inoperable until reset appropriately.
If Connected is No, push the Connect button to establish
connection to the detector computer. If Connected updates to yes,
then press the Init button to initialize the software using the
information listed below (note Initing will change to Yes immediately
after the Init button is pressed and will revert to No when
initialization is complete). If all works properly,
SideCarInit should say Success! and the data taker should work
normally. If there are problems, contact a telescope technician or
support astronomer for assistance.
WriteAll is an option to write all reads to the FITS file
rather than just the final MCDS or UTR data. For most programs this
should be the default No. When set to Yes it takes longer to write
the FITS files and files are significantly larger.
ShARCS status of the current exposure (or last exposure if no exposure
is in progress) is listed in the Status GUI. Most of this information
is displayed elsewhere, but is useful for engineering or diagnosing
problems.
The Action GUI is only used rarely used by the technical staff. The
buttons are explained here for completeness, but observers should not
use them unless instructed to by a telescope technician or support
astronomer.
The Resume button attempts to resume connection to the ICE
server on stealthie without initializing. The Reset
button resets the detctor controller. GetAsicPower retrieves
the SIDECAR power status from the hardware. The status is displayed
in the AsicPwr= field, where -1 is unknown, 0 is off, and 1 is
on. DLFirmware=No is a menu with two options, Yes or No, to
set whether the JADE firmware is downloaded upon initialization. This
becomes No if the initialization succeeds. Its default value is No.
The PowerDown button turns off power to the detector
controller. The Close button closes the GUI.
The Sharcs Window GUI enables selection of a sub-region to read out on
the detector. Four numbers need to be entered to define a region,
start x, end x, start y, and end y. The full detector is 2048x2048
pixels, and shown as the green box if Figure 14. The the top quarter
of the detector is non-functional, indicated by the red X. When new
values are entered for the region vertices, the green area will alter
showing exactly which portion of the detector is being read out (see
Figure 15 for example). The Full button sets the start and end
values to read out the entire detector. The Center Zoom is set
to a 100x100 region centered on the ShaneAO optical axis.
It is important to note that exposure parameters for subarrays are stored
in the exposure palette, but the size and position of the region are not.
Also, after windowing the detector, the first full 2048x2048 image taken
afterwards will have some undesirable bias values in the region that was
last used. Hence, it is always advisable to take a quick junk full frame
after windowing to clear the bias defect.
More information on minimum exposure times for different sized
sub-region windows are in the Observing Hints
and Tips.
Figure 1: ShARCS data taking GUI, sharcs_fe.
Figure 2a: Exposure in progress status bar.
Figure 2b: Blue background indicates FITS file
is being written to data disk.
Figure 3: Normal Mode for exposure parameter entry.
Figure 4: Abort Menu
Menu Bar
Figure 5: ShARCS Menu Bar
File Menu
Figure 6: File Menu
Figure 7: Advanced Mode exposure configuration GUI
Windows Menu
Figure 8: Windows Menu
The second column, Reads, is the number of reads.
The third column, Resets, is the number of resets performed before the
exposure begins.
The fourth column, Coadds, is the number of coadds for that exposure
configuration.
The final column, Exposures, is the number of exposures taken with
that configuration.
Figure 9: Exposure Palette
Figure 10: Take Darks GUI
Setup
Figure 11: Setup GUI
Status
Figure 12: Status GUI
Action
Figure 13: Actions GUI
Window
Figure 14: Window GUI
Figure 15: Window GUI with Center Zoom region set.
sa@ucolick.org
Last modified: Sat Mar 26 15:50:49 PDT 2016