Control and Monitoring of the Karoo Telescope Arrays using Python (5 years later) by Toufeeq Ockards and Martin Slabber

In 2012 the The SKA SA Control and Monitoring (CAM) gave a talk at PyConZA and it can be viewed at this Youtube Video and more info at PyConZA 2012 link.

5 years later, Python is still used for Controlling and Monitoring of this world-class instrument, that is on its path to being the most sensitive radio telescope in the southern hemisphere. The 64 dish array completion is around the corner and we take a look back at the last 5 years and our time with Python.

Transcript

1. www.ska.ac.za PRESENTER: Toufeeq Ockards Martin Slabber Control and Monitoring of the Karoo Telescope Arrays Using Python 5 Years later
2. www.ska.ac.za Overview What we will cover
3. www.ska.ac.za SKA SA Location HCD Human Capital Development MeerKAT World Class Telescope SKA Project International Participation SKA SA Who we are and What are our goals?
4. www.ska.ac.za KAT-7 7-dish Precursor • • • • • • • •
5. www.ska.ac.za MeerKAT 64-dish Instrument • • • • •
6. www.ska.ac.za SKA1-mid 200-dish Instrument • • • • • • •
7. www.ska.ac.za MeerKAT each Dish • • • • • • • • • • • •
8. www.ska.ac.za Control And Monitoring (CAM) Subsystem High level telescope control system with scheduling, alarms and monitoring
9. www.ska.ac.za Control And Monitoring Subsystem diagram CAM CBF SDP BMS Data plane SPEAD (UDP Multicast) (big data) TFR WX USE Control plane KATCP (non-http) (little data) FPGA GPU
10. www.ska.ac.za Hardware device control Observation script Antenna Positioner Antenna Proxy point (az,el) target (az,el) • • • • • •
11. www.ska.ac.za Engineers Scientists Operators Who uses CAM
12. www.ska.ac.za How do we use Python (not all use cases) nose Engineers
13. www.ska.ac.za How do we use Python (not all use cases) Operators
14. www.ska.ac.za How do we use Python (not all use cases) Scientists
15. www.ska.ac.za Why did we choose Python? Operators need low level interface for root cause analysis, easy to learn, easy to extend Commissioning Scientists need a scripting framework that allow full control of different subsystems Engineers needed an interface to get the job done Software development had to integrate to everything imaginable Cost of innovation should be low “Life is too short to write C++ code” - David Beazley Zen of Python Poster by ewjoachim Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported (CC BY-SA 3.0)
16. www.ska.ac.za SKA SA and Python Codebase PYPI Packages KAT Packages Files Lines of Comments Lines of Code
17. www.ska.ac.za KATCP • • • • • • • • • • Control protocol used for all internal Control And Monitoring communications
18. www.ska.ac.za Monitoring and archiving Distributing and storing sensors values • • • • • • • • • • •
19. www.ska.ac.za Simulation and testing • • • • • • • • • • •
20. www.ska.ac.za Lessons learnt (Curated from senior engineers)
21. www.ska.ac.za DEMO
22. www.ska.ac.za MeerKAT joins the ranks of the world’s great scientific instruments through its First Light image
23. www.ska.ac.za Questions? Thank you
24. www.ska.ac.za Interfaces ipython
25. www.ska.ac.za In [30]: kat.print_sensors('m06.*epoch', strategy='period', params='2') Print filtered sensors on <all>.m06.*epoch : period : @ 22:21:16 - Page 1 of 1 <B>ack <N>ext Items:4 Per page:50 (+/-) Q to quit ------------------------------ Update strategy: period ------------------------------------ Name Unit Status Value time Update time Value m060.dig.l-band.time.synchronisation-epoch s inactive 10:08:37.79 22:21:15.23 0.0 m061.dig.l-band.time.synchronisation-epoch s nominal 17:41:20.50 22:21:15.28 1507131597.0 m062.dig.l-band.time.synchronisation-epoch s inactive 10:22:14.63 22:21:15.29 0.0 m063.dig.l-band.time.synchronisation-epoch s nominal 17:41:24.50 22:21:15.29 1507131597.0 {a.name:a.sensor.rsc_rsc_he_compressor_supply_pressure.get_value() for a in kat.ants if a.sensor.rsc_device_status.get_status() == 'nominal'}
26. www.ska.ac.za Interfaces GUI
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