Large Millimeter Telescope Monitor & Control System

摘要

The Large Millimeter Telescope, LMT, is composed of a set of devices and instruments that are controlled in a coordinated scheme to perform scientific tasks and collect corresponding data. The status of these devices must be monitored in real-time to assure safety and scientific integrity. This is what typically describes a telescope monitor and control system. The traditional approach to creating a monitor and control system has been to implement individual device level controllers and then attach them to a client/server system to achieve the desired coordination. The problems in this approach are twofold: complexity and inflexibility. Synchronization and communication protocols must be implemented, and any upgrades or additions require code modification and perhaps even design changes. Our solution is to automate the creation of a framework for monitor and control by describing the system components in XML and then automatically generating source code for extendible base classes and user interfaces. This enables the monitor and control system to be both flexible and adaptable, and greatly simplifies the design complexity. It also allows the system to be reusable in many different applicable problem domains. To simplify the coordination mechanism among the different subsystems, we have employed a global state system for the communication model. A single global state object containing references to all of the components of the system is described in XML and corresponding source code is automatically created to implement global object access.