Telescope control system

If the building stops (e.g., because the safety system is triggered or if the drive system fails) the telescope will (after some time) drive in to a safety switch and its power will be cut. When this happens while moving at full speed this leads to the telescope `crashing' in to building with potential risk for damage to equipment caused by the electromagnetic energy that is stored in the motors and drive electronics. If this happens at low (tracking) speed this will also in the end lead to the safety switch being tripped by the telescope, but normally there is plenty of time to check the building (typically the safety system at the bottom of the entrance stairs is tripped by accident) and the safety system can be reset before the power to the telescope is cut, the tracking is lost and the telescope system needs to be restarted. To prevent strong crashes, the TCS can ramp down the telescope azimuth speed when a loss of power to the building is detected. When this happens during tracking there will be (slightly) less time to reset the safety system in case of false alarm as the telescope would stop before reaching the safety switch, but the advantage would be that even if the telescope is stopped the powered is not switched-off and there is no need to restart the system. This system is currently being implemented and tested.

In the near future we plan to move the User Interface, which runs on a rather ancient computer screen to a big colour screen by using a regular PC to act as front end to the TCS.