Telescope control system

An inventory, testing and cleaning was made of all the VT100 terminal, both spares and the ones in use. Enough spares are available for some years, and apparently these terminals are also still made.

When there is ice on the catwalk around the telescope, there is a need to check if the entrance stairs can pass over the ice on the catwalk. In the recent cold period, so much ice had built up on the catwalk, that 2 observing nights were lost because the telescope could not turn. Checking if the stairs can pass over the ice is very cumbersome, and an option to run the telescope azimuth/building very slow was implemented, eliminating the use of a potentially critical engineering program. A person can now stand on the entrance stair or walk along on the catwalk while checking for ice/snow obstacles, and if an obstacle is noted, walk inside and press the ABORT (telescope stop) on the user interface keyboard. This lowers the risk for damage to the stair safety sensors.

In case of an external power failure and if the emergency generator is not running then there is limited time before the battery power in the UPS goes down. The TCS has now got access to this vital information so it can decide to close and power down in good time if there is no external power, and before the batteries runs out. A test program has verified that TCS gets the needed information. This will then be incorporated in the security handling.