EMMI Stand-alone

Starting up

You should be logged on to wemmi. Starting from the pop-up menu (on vue), you will get the Instrument start-up Panel.

Selecting EMMI will produce a Configuration Panel that allows you to define how you wish to run the instrument (i.e.. the degree of simulation; whether you wish to use the PCO on the instrument workstation etc. etc.). This panel will disappear when EMMI starts up.

While the start-up is taking place a history window will appear with information regarding the start-up. Any error messages will be shown there. Once EMMI has started up the CCD standalone panel and the EMMI OS panel will be present.

When starting up the state of the system is not initialized. In the pull down menu marked System you can select STANDBY and ONLINE in that sequence. Wait for  each to complete. The ONLINE command will also moves all the instrument functions, which takes some time.

The EMMI OS

os0Control_emmiOs handles the top level control of EMMI. The os0Control module itself is the same for EMMI and SUSI. The parameters that can be handled are of course different.

The panel itself warrants some explanation. The standard 3 state buttons are used for the mechanisms that are on filter wheels. The top part of the panel is used to display the status of the CCDs in both the red and the blue arm of the instrument. In the middle of the status area you see what OS itself is doing and on the right the status of the subsystems an the status of the exposures.

The control area

On the left, the mode of the instrument is selected (RILD, BIMG, REMD, BLMD, DIMD)

The rest of the panel will reconfigure itself following your selection to display the elements that are available in that mode.

The automatic/manual option of the Camera Focus is one of the unfortunate violations of the NTT principle of having no intelligence in the GUI. In automatic mode the temperature inside EMMI is read, and on every SET-UP command issued before or during an exposure, the camera is refocused to that temperature. The focus formula is a configurable parameter of the system.

The estate buttons will request a configuration which will be executed when the SET-UP button is clicked upon.

The detector control

The name of the file to be written, windowing and read-out speed are selected here. The exposure type can be set to Normal or Dark (in which case the shutter will not open). Note that the update of the CCD windowing parameters on the panel is only done after the exposure starts.

You can confuse the hell out of the system if you send set-ups from both BOB and the OS panel without sending a START from the same place you did the SET-UP from. I.e.. If you do set-ups from BOB then you should START from BOB, as well before doing any SET-UP from the OS. This is due to the fact that the CCD software stores the SET-UP parameters and only updates the database when the start takes place. Since the panel reads the database for display, and checks the display values for updates when a SET-UP is issued from the panel you can end-up with an inconsistent configuration (at least not the one you thought you were using).

The exposure type

In addition to the exposure type, Normal or Dark that control the shutter, the FITS header can have an additional attribute describing the exposure as Normal or Calibration.

Select the option and click on Config. This works in a somewhat bizarre fashion by sending to the OS a SET-UP command with the -file option. A set of files living under /insroot is used to change the keywords.

The Exposure State Area

On this area, the state of the exposure is displayed: Red and Blue Exposure Status, Remaining time, Observation No, Observation ID, and the status of both shutters.

The MOS unit

A separate module is used to control the MOS unit. From the OS gui you can call (using the pull down menus) the emipanMOS panel. The MOS unit is brought ONLINE directly from this panel. This unit has a somewhat special behaviour warranting this. After issuing the ONLINE command you can load a file and then START punching!

The panel will keep you up to date with the progress of the punching.

Calibration lamps

Another separate module is used to control the calibration lamps. It is called from the toolbar of the OS gui by pulling down the Calibration lamp option. The calibration lamps module is brought ONLINE directly from this panel. From this panel, the calibration lamps may be selected and turned on, the status of the shutter of the calibration unit is also showed.

Configuring EMMI

To configure EMMI a panel equivalent (but a lot more complex) to the SUSI2 one has been generated (EMMI Configuration Panel). The same principle as for SUSI applies with the CFGELEM being the basic command being issued. However, for each mechanism the values following the CFGELEM command correspond to somewhat different parameters.