v1.56.0

In this release, the S4ACS project was refactored to be used in the development of the ECHARPE Acquisition Control System (EACS). The following sections briefly describes the main modifications done to meet this requirement.

Major changes

• Create a generic Simulated Camera Class.
• Create a Simulated iXon Ultra class, which inherits from the Simulated Camera Class.
• Create a class to represent the iXon Ultra cameras, which inherits from its respective simulated class
• New unit tests were added. The current code coverage is 54.8%
• Create a SPARC4 Channel class that inherits from the generic Channel class
• Add a parameter to indicate if S4ACS is in the real or simulated mode.

Minor changes

• #SEQS, #CYCLES, and WPPOS parameters were removed from the simulated camera class and passed to the Channel class.
• Several unused classes and methods were removed from the project

Full Changelog: v1.55.1...v1.56.0

v1.55.1

This is the S4ACS release v1.55.1. In this release, the information if S4ACS was run in the real or simulated mode was included into the published status message.

Full Changelog: v1.55.0...v1.55.1

v1.55.0

This is the S4ACS release v1.55.0. In the following sections, the major and minor changes included in this version are brifely presented.

Major changes

• The class responbile for creating the log files were refactored. Now, by setting a front panel parameter, S4ACS allows to choose between the log levels STATUS, DEBBUG, INFO, WARNING, ERROR, and CRITICAL. When chosing the INFO log level, for example, S4ACS will write in the log file all the messages with the level INFO or above.
• The read noise and gain values related to the EMCCD camera 14364 were included in the csv files used by the Python script to create the image headers.

Minor changes

• Some non-used parameters related to the S4ACS initialization were removed. Besides, the configuration of the parameters is disabled after the execution of the software.
• Log messages with the level of DEBBUG and STATUS were added to the code.
• The waveplate status verification algorithm done by S4ACS before the start of an exposure was refactored using the LabVIEW library to deal with JSON strings.
• The template S4ACS configuration file was modified to include the log level parameter.
• Now, a runtime error stops the S4ACS execution.
• Some classes that were not being used were removed from the project.

v1.54.0

This is the S4ACS release v1.54.0. In the following sections, the changes implemented in this current version are brifely presented.

Major Changes

• The problem related to the ABORT command received during the acquisition of an image series using the asynchronous mode was fixed.
• Validity checking of parameters configured using the SET command is now being done individually instead of for all the acquisition configuration parameters.
• A verification of the maximum number of frames allowed as a function of the cameras spatial resolution was added.
• The time at which S4ACS finishes acquiring an image series and saving these images to the computer disk are being logged.

Minor Changes

• Bugs related to the treatment of the coordinated provided by TCS using regex were fixed.
• The content of the image headers was updated.
• The S4ICS mechanisms status with pos_id=-1 are not discarded anymore.

v1.53.4

In the following, the modifications implemented in this release are briefly presented:

• S4ACS logs when it is started.
• Add a routine to fix wrong values found for the RA, DEC, TCSHA, and ICSVRSN keywords.

v1.53.3

This release fix the communication problem found in the previous version of the software. In addition, the time interval considered by S4ACS to detect a loss of communication with external applications was changed from 60 s to 4 s.

v1.53.2

⚠️WARNING:
IN THIS RELEASE, A PROBLEM RELATED TO THE STATUS MESSAGES PUBLISHED BY S4ACS WAS IDENTIFIED.
WE SUGGEST DO NO USE IT.

In this release, the problem related to the loss of communication during an observation was fixed.
This problem required the observatory assitant to reinitialize S4ACS to reestablish the communicaiton with the weather station and focuser applications.

v1.53.1

This is the first release in which the S4ACS executable was created using the 64bits version of LabVIEW.
This change required the whole acquisition system (including Python) to be migrated to the specified version too.

In the follwing, the mains S4ACS features added in this release are breafly presented:

Major changes

• The problem of image headers with outdated keyword values was fixed.
• A verification using regular expression (regex) was implemented for some keywords as, for example, RA and DEC.
• A JSON string with the status of the communication between S4ACS and other external applications was included in the published status message.
• All the S4ICS keywords are being wirtten into the image headers.

Minor changes

• The time when S4ACS stops is logged in the corresponding log file.
• The problem as an exposure time value of 9.99999e-6 s found in the header of bias images was fixed.
• The problem of subexposed images found in the simulated mode was fixed.
• The problem of image headers containing an empty COMMENT keyword was fixed.

v1.53.0

⚠️WARNING:
IN THIS RELEASE, A PROBLEM RELATED TO THE VARIABLE TYPE IN WICH THE IMAGES ARE SAVED WAS IDENTIFIED.
USE IT WITH CAUTION.

The following sections describe the new functionalities and bug fixes implemented in the current S4ACS release.

Implemented functionalities

In this release, the error management performed by S4ACS was refactored. Now, the software presents the Errors Tab (see Figure 1), which contains three panels related to three types of errors that may occur during the execution of this software. The first panel presents the errors found when the user sets the camera operation mode using the engineering tab of S4GUI. The second panel presents the errors related to the configuration of the next acquisition parameters, such as the exposure time and number of frames. These errors prevent the acquisition of a new image series and they can be fixed by sending a new request to reconfigure the invalid parameters. Finally, the last panel shows any other error (named execution error) that may occur during the operation of S4ACS, which does not fit in the two types previously described. An execution error is cleaned when receiving a new EXPOSE command request. The errors presented in these panels are also included in the JSON string published by S4ACS.

Figure 1: Errors Tab of S4ACS.

Figure 2 presents the S4ACS front panel and the red rectangle at the bottom of the figure highlights the regions in which the indicators related to the camera operation mode errors and execution errors are found. However, in this release, these indicators do not present a description of the error itself, but direct the user to see the explanations presented in the Errors Tab.

Figure 2: S4ACS front panel.

Another functionality added to S4ACS was a log of the moment in which the communication between this software and the other instrument sub-systems as well as the observatory applications is reestablished. When used in conjunction with the already implemented log of the loss of communication, this functionality helps to determine for how long the communication with the other applications was lost.

S4ACS now presents the STOP_APP command, which S4GUI can use to park the EMCCD cameras before turning the instrument off. In receiving this command, S4ACS starts a routine to turn off the cameras safely: the shutter is closed and the cooler is turned off. After performing this procedure, the cameras temperature starts to rise and the power supply can be turned off after a time interval of 10 minutes.

Finally, the log files related to each observation night are created in the same partition disk where the acquired images are saved.

Bug fixes

• BSCALE and BZERO are two keywords commonly used by applications that deal with FITS files and the Python package astropy was preventing these keywords from being written into the SPARC4 image headers. In addition, the keywords NAXIS1 and NAXIS2 were being written without a description. To solve these problems, these keywords were explicitly added in the script right before the image is saved into the computer disk.
• There were some situations in which an error occurred during the S4ACS execution was being continuously logged into the correspondent log file. This problem led to the acquisition computers running out of memory when S4ACS was left in this state for a very long time. In this release, the cause of this problem was identified and fixed.

v1.52.5

This release treats the string "Weather" sometimes sent by the weather station concatenated with the JSON publication.