The POrtable Submillimeter Telescope (POST) was put into operation in Nov. 1999. In this paper, we briefly introduce the control system of the telescope, including both hardware and software. The hardware is based on the S-Bus of a SUN workstation. Industrial standard I/O interfaces are adopted to fulfil different purposes of information transfer. Pulse width modulation (PWM) and harmonic driver are adopted to the antenna driving system, which is controlled in a mode of closed-loop positional feedback. The control software is to accomplish various observing and diagnostic functions of the telescope. The software is designed as a centralized real-time, multi-task package on the base of the UNIX platform. Present version of the entire control software includes 14,000 lines of source code in C language. The control system as a whole realizes all functions of a highly automatic all-sky submillimeter telescope used to observe cosmic submillimeter line radiation, particularly the neutral atomic carbon line at 492GHz. Besides, the system can be operated remotely. The principle as well as the software can be applied to control other precision radio telescopes.

Date Published: 13 December 2002
PDF: 9 pages
Proc. SPIE 4848, Advanced Telescope and Instrumentation Control Software II, (13 December 2002); doi: 10.1117/12.460923

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 4848:
Advanced Telescope and Instrumentation Control Software II
Hilton Lewis, Editor(s)