Abstract Details

Name: Kumar TS
Affiliation: ARIES, Nainital
Conference ID: ASI2019_306
Title : Development of a generic instrument controller for the 3.6 m DOT facility at ARIES
Authors and Co-Authors : T S Kumar, Shobhit Yadava and Brijesh Kumar
Abstract Type : Poster
Abstract Category : Instrumentation and Techniques
Abstract : Although most of the instrument control systems are simpler but in an observatory it is important to standardize the hardware and interfacing software for optimizing the development time and cost and also for maintainability and upgradability. Thus, a common hardware platform is being developed for controlling the instrument rotary and linear stages. The controller also has analog and digital ports for interfacing analog sensors and other I/O devices like limit switches and relays. The instrument control system would be capable of interfacing motion stages driven by different types of motors including stepper motors, brushed DC motors and brushless motors. It supports feedback from incremental encoders and serial absolute encoders while the embedded control algorithm supports both open and closed loop control. The controller is scalable over I2C and CAN bus and is interfaced with a computer either directly or using an adapter board over a predefined protocol and command sets. The adapter board has inbuilt serial, serial to USB, I2C, CAN and SPI ports and supports plug in modules for expanding the telemetry capabilities to LAN, WiFi, Zigbee etc. Currently, the controller hardware is being tested with AC, stepper, brushed and brushless DC motors and a generic firmware is being developed.