Drew Malonis, Instrument Test Engineer
Modular Network-Based Control of LLAMASShort Abstract: The Large Lenslet Array MAgellan Spectrograph (LLAMAS) is a low-cost Integral Field Unit spectrograph being developed at the MIT Kavli Institute for the 6.5-meter Magellan telescopes. When fully operational, it will provide 2400 spectra in a 37″x37″ field of view from 350-980 nm. The spectra themselves are acquired by 24 thermoelectrically-cooled CCD cameras, and the instrument also contains hundreds of other sensors and actuators, including stepper motors, flow sensors, rotary encoders, solenoid valves, temperature monitors, calibration light sources, and optical shutters. To allow all of these disparate pieces to operate together as a single system, the LLAMAS team is developing a distributed, modular, network-based control scheme that leverages open-source hardware and software.