LINC-NIRVANA (LN) is a German-Italian Fizeau (imaging) interferometer for the Large Binocular Telescope (LBT). The Instrument Control Software (ICS) of this instrument is a hierarchical, distributed software package, which runs on several computers. In this paper we present the bottom layer of the hierarchy - the Basic Device Application (BASDA) layer. This layer simplifies the development of the ICS through a general driver architecture, which supports different types of hardware. This generic device architecture provides a high level interface to encapsulate the hardware dependent driver. The benefit of such a device architecture is to keep the basic device-driver layer flexible and independent from the hardware, and to keep the hardware transparent to the ICS. Additionally, the basic device-driver layer supports interfaces to IDL based applications for calibration and laboratory testing of astronomical instruments, and interfaces to engineering GUIs that allow to maintain the software components easily.

Date Published: 15 July 2008
PDF: 11 pages
Proc. SPIE 7019, Advanced Software and Control for Astronomy II, 70191G (15 July 2008); doi: 10.1117/12.789377

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 7019:
Advanced Software and Control for Astronomy II
Alan Bridger; Nicole M. Radziwill, Editor(s)