Engineering 2010July-Aug

See last set of notes from Engineering 2010May-June

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2010 August 3:

1. jd/fb: from scratch alignment of champ. preparation for picomotor tests at night.
2. need to order new cable for ealing mounts (db9->rj45)[done]
3. measured asymmetry in picomotor motions for dicroics 1-4 [not for tower of power yet]
4. ordered ealing cable for champ dicroic 
5. got 100x100 readout working for champ
6. tested baseline button for mirc -- worked in lab but seemed to fail on sky
7. fringes with mirc!
8. XC tweaked up fibers. nearly as good as last year maybe 30% lower.. not exactly sure
9. vme power supply died!! but luckily there was spare!
10. short to do list: find achromatic ND filters (in mirc cabinet?), edit picomotor gui to deal with asymmetric gains

2010 August 4:

1. tested new mirkwood code, but found memory problems associated with pipe. still needs some work
2. made new version of pico gui "picoM/Pixel_Pico/Pixel_Pico.py" that allows one to click 'pixel space' rather than in picomotor counts. Only calibrated so far for Dicroics 1,2,3,4. Will do the ToP and BS mmirrors next.
3. confirmed with theo that the baseline button for mirc works!
4. i did some work on making more data space available. still more work here needs to be done.
5. Still ahve tings left to do: gdtInfo, fiber positions are all zero in data, more data shuffling backups
6. fb worked on gdt history and accumulation methods
7. when not touched the champ alignment has been stable from one night to next.
8. fb extended rental car and added stefan to driver list
9. Xc/jd put together the shutters: we need to drill clearance hole in each shutter for attaching to servo.
Plans: shift to day schedule (at ork by 9am) to align champ and get delay line fringes fro full suite of tests, ask laszlo, steve to drill holes

2010 August 5:

1. got up early. aligned champ beams 3,4 on delay line
2. worked on search code. added 'SS' command to champ socket manager
3. calibrated tower 1L, BC3,4. 
4. fixed integer rounding for counts in pixel pico
5. looked into gdtInfo problem [actually could not reproduce problem!!]
6. XC fixed the missing fiber positions in files
7. XC did lots of shutter wiring.
8. sk working on gui

2010 August 6

1. jdm/fb carefully validated the gdt fitting and dewarping code in champ/astropci
2. new image coadding for champ
3. installed new cable for zabar control champ offsets.
4. sk made new gui for controller zabar champ offsets -- in picoM/Pixel_Pico/Pixel_Pico.py
5. prism for mirc got stuck, had to take apart and re-assemble. should replace this and the mount.
6. show mauterspaugh and askari around to check out mirc as part of vision
7. sk found champ fringe while mirc was observing. offsets: b3: 80000 b4: 120000 -- see image below.
8. continued shutter work by xc
9. continued mirc upgrade work by ep

2010 August 7

1. during day lab alignment, pzt on beam 3 stopped working. after an hour or two of debugging we found the extension cable had gone bad. i am in process of ordering two 2m extension cables for lemo 0s 250 (compatible with piezojena ENV 150) -- called Z-002-02.
2. We found b3-b4 fringes using retro at 7.09mm (with retros in mirc-alignment positions from last night).
3. gdt estimator (with no accumulation) seems to perform reasonably well, although true test is with accumulator.
4. ep found interesting issue with cache that might be using up the free memory on mirkwood
5. we continue to have intermittant problem with mirkwood where it won't boot after switching from new to old mirkwood drives.  the chassis may be wearing out or something else?
6. hopefully tomorrow we will ahve lab fringes in b1-b2, b3-b4 early. we will test the gdt acuumulation , will get new fringe data to optimize opd map, and will test state matchine using delaylines. if we get this done we can go on sky.

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2010 August 8-10

1. Many tests last few days. We got fringe tracking working in lab again using delay lines and W1=W2+0.19
2. the OPD maps seems tohave changed since last year.  Having a good opd map for each piezo is key.  We caclulated a new one for each and will be tsting in detail.
3. Added lots of feature through gui. working: init reference, linear search, spiral search, various ft parameters.
4. Since w1 doesn't track well, we turn it off. we realized this greatly adds to turbulence since the metrology normally acts to correct turbulence in the air path. something to keep in mind on sky.
5. we have first half-night for engineering for wed/thursday (ming is here!). We hope to try to test fringe tracking and gdt on beam 3-4 and then move on to all beams!!
6. Problmes with using new backup drive for old Mirkwood. need to reformat this. 
7. Ettore got a version of the NEW MIRKWOOD working!! still some loose ends with spooler headers but the hard part is working and hope to test it also this week before we leave. see 2010Aug:mirkwood2

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Logs for each of us

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Ettore Pedretti came out for 2 weeks to work on upgrade xenomai on mirc/champ

2010JulAug_EP_log

2010Aug:mirkwood2

Xiao Che came for 3 weeks to lead the MIRC observing and do some small MIRC improvements

work finished and needs to be done

Fabien Baron came for 4+ weeks to observe with CLIMB/CLASSIC and to work on CHAMP engineering

2010JulAug_FB_log

Stefan Kraus came out for 2+ weeks to help with CHAMP

Rafael Millan-Gabet came up for XX nights to help with CHAMP engineering

JDM came out for 3 weeks to help with champ commissioning (4 telescope operation!)

To Do List and Priorities

CHAMP planning 2010Aug3-14 plan