RCC dome encoder workaround
Since the lightning strike/overcurrent, several key systems at Piszkéstető are temporarily not operational, including the dome encoder. This means the dome cannot be controlled with the regular commands, or cannot be set to auto mode with rcc dome auto. To circumvent this, a webcam looking at the dome slit has been installed on the side of the telescope and the following method has been devised.
Setting up the ccdsh instances
One of the two main differences is that now we need to ccdsh instances to operate both the telescope and the camera. The first instance is stared with the --no-startup switch:
tibor@m6:~$ ccdsh --no-startup
For the spectrograph camera, the following modules have to be loaded:
CCD> module mod_fli_camera.so --device 172.31.171.98:8853
CCD> module mod_dummy_filter.so
For the SI camera, it is probably easier to create and source a custom ccdsh file which contains the following (i.e., everything from the original file but the line which initializes the autofocus, since that does not work in --no-startup:
module mod_sicamera.so module mod_ace_filter.so define filter 1 B "Bessel B" define filter 2 V "Bessel V" define filter 3 R "Bessel R" define filter 4 I "Bessel I" define filter 5 C "Clear" define filter 6 u "Sloan u" define filter 7 g "Sloan g" define filter 8 r "Sloan r" define filter 9 i "Sloan i" define filter 10 z "Sloan z" define filter 11 E "Empty"
We also need another, regular instance to control the telescope as usual, and the dome with low-level criorcc commands.