ROBOT USERS GUIDE

The RTS2-F system (aka robot or Rob) has many commands for automatic acquisition of exposures with the 1.2m. Click this LINK to read the primer, a cookbook, instructions on starting and stopping the robot, or a description of a typical night's sequence of operations.

The status of RTS2-F may be viewed or changed with a web browser through its web GUI (password required). It also uses real-time system commands that control the robot itself, Keplercam and telescope systems. These commands are also available to user observer, either from an xterm or from Telshell.

See below for a brief description of the essential commands, or type man robot in any xterm on flwo48.

For more information, please check: RTS2-F Robot Documentation (primer, cookbook, etc.)

Telshell commands

• GOrobot
  Start the RTS2-F robot: take dome flats, open up, take sky flats, reference the telescope, focus, observe, close up
  NOTE: IF the servers required for the robot are not running, you need to use commands Rstatus and Rstart (see below)
• GOrobot -h
  Do nothing but list available RTS2-F flags:
  -d use alternative dome flat list in FLATS/ALTFILT
  -D SKIP dome flats (default is take dome flats)
  -e SKIP evening sky flats (default is take u and i sky flats)
  -m SKIP morning sky flats (automatically skipped if evening flats taken for the night)
  -R RUN tele reference (default is SKIP)
  -F SKIP focus run (default is run focus)
  -P FIX pointing using astrometry.net
  -E get 2 defocused images for collimation (default is SKIP)

xterm commands

• MONrobot
  Start the RTS2-F monitoring program (change state ON/OFF with F4, exit with F10; try man rts2-mon for details).
• GOqueues
  Run GUI to create observing queues (ask staff for details if you are unfamiliar with queues).
• GOweather
  Run GUI to view weather, set weather limits and robot state.
• KILLweather/STARTweather
  Stop/start weather sensing. Use, with caution, when the weather sensors fail, e.g., the cloud sensor indicates it's cloudy but the skycam and the 1.5m observer indicate otherwise. Restart when sensor failure is corrected.
• GOcircular [-]TARGET1 [-]TARGET2 ...
  Set up recurring observations in the service queue with targets in: /home/observer/ROBOT/QUEUES/circular.q. A - in front of TARGET1 removes TARGET1 from the file. The command prints out circular.q, shows the syntax to load targets, and prompts to reload the service queue; hit RETURN if satisfied.
• STOProbot
  Stop the RTS2-F robot. It will take a minute for the robot to react and stop execution. An ongoing exposure will continue until it is readout before the robot comes to a full stop.
• Rstatus
  Show the status of the RTS2-F servers (these are required for the robot and must be running before the robot is started with GOrobot).
• Rstop/Rstart
  Stop/Start RTS2-F servers.
  Note: The servers are required for the robot and normally run all the time. DO NOT use these commands lightly. Make sure the robot is NOT running before Rstop/Rstart. Restart the robot with GOrobot and make sure Rstatus shows that the servers are running.
  Running servers are required to run the robot with GOrobot.
  When the robot is stuck or sluggish, stopping and restarting may clear its problems. Note: After flwo48 reboots, if you plan to use any robot functions, use Rstart to start the servers.
  Rstop stops MONrobot and GOweather as well as the servers. It is a good idea to exit GOqueues after Rstop.
  After Rstart, restart MONrobot, GOweather and GOqueues. Also, switch the state to ON in GOweather by clicking on the button at the top of the window.
  There is a number of cron jobs for observer that must run when Rob is running. These jobs are disabled when Rob is not running, such as when Astro 101 students are using the 1.2m manually. If there is any problem with these, please consult with staff.
• SHOWlogs
  View a night's detailed log, SHOWlogs [yymmdd]
• SHOWdomes
  View a log of dome flats, SHOWdomes [yymmdd]
• SHOWskies
  View a log of sky flats, SHOWskies [yymmdd]
• SHOWnight
  View a list of a night's exposures, SHOWnight [yymmdd]
• SHOWheart
  View the the health of the system, SHOWheart [yymmdd]