Welcome to POCS documentation!

Overview

PANOPTES is an open source citizen science project that is designed to find exoplanets with digital cameras. The goal of PANOPTES is to establish a global network of of robotic cameras run by amateur astronomers and schools in order to monitor, as continuously as possible, a very large number of stars. For more general information about the project, including the science case and resources for interested individuals, see the project overview.

POCS (PANOPTES Observatory Control System) is the main software driver for the PANOPTES unit, responsible for high-level control of the unit. There are also files for a one-time upload to the arduino hardware, as well as various scripts to read information from the environmental sensors.

Getting Started

POCS is designed to control a fully constructed PANOPTES unit. Additionally, POCS can be run with simulators when hardware is not present or when the system is being developed.

For information on building a PANOPTES unit, see the main PANOPTES website.

To get started with POCS there are three easy steps:

1. Setup POCS on the computer you will be using for your unit or for development.
2. Test your POCS setup by running our testing script
3. Start using POCS!

See below for more details.

Setup

Manual install

• Computer setup
• While logged in as user panoptes:
  • Create /var/panoptes, owned by user panoptes (for a computer that will be controlling a PANOPTES unit), or as yourself for development of the PANOPTES software:

    sudo mkdir -p /var/panoptes
    sudo chown panoptes /var/panoptes
    chmod 755 /var/panoptes
    mkdir /var/panoptes/logs

  • Define these environment variables, both in your current shell and in $HOME/.bash_profile (to only apply to user panoptes) or in /etc/profile (to apply to all users).

    export PANDIR=/var/panoptes   # Main Dir
    export PANLOG=${PANDIR}/logs  # Log files
    export POCS=${PANDIR}/POCS    # Observatory Control
    export PAWS=${PANDIR}/PAWS    # Web Interface
    export PIAA=${PANDIR}/PIAA    # Image Analysis
    export PANUSER=panoptes       # PANOPTES linux user

  • Clone the PANOPTES software repositories into /var/panoptes:

    cd ${PANDIR}
    git clone https://github.com/panoptes/POCS.git
    git clone https://github.com/panoptes/PAWS.git
    git clone https://github.com/panoptes/PIAA.git

  • Install the software dependencies of the PANOPTES software:

    ${POCS}/scripts/install/install-dependencies.sh

  • To pickup the changes to PATH, etc., log out and log back in.
  • Run setup.py to install the software.
    • If you'll be doing development of the software, use these commands:

      python ${POCS}/setup.py develop
      python ${PIAA}/setup.py develop

    • If the computer is for controlling a PANOPTES unit, use these commands:

      python ${POCS}/setup.py install
      python ${PIAA}/setup.py install

Docker

Docker is an application that lets you run existing services, in this case POCS, on a kind of virtual machine. By running via Docker you are guranteeing you are using a setup that works, saving you time on setup and other issues that you might run into doing a manual install.

Of course, this also means that you need to set up Docker. Additionally, you will need to be able to log into our Google Docker container storage area so you can pull down the existing image. The steps below should help you to get going.

Install Docker

Depending on what operating system you are using there are different ways of getting Docker on your system. The Docker installation page should have all the answers you need.

Install gcloud

gcloud is a command line utility that lets you interact with many of the Google cloud services. We will primarily use this to authenticate your account but this is also used, for example, to upload images your PANOPTES unit takes.

See the gcloud installation page for easy install instructions.

Let Docker use gcloud

Docker needs to be able to use your gcloud login to pull the PANOPTES images. There are some helper scripts to make this easier (from here):

gcloud components install docker-credential-gcr
docker-credential-gcr configure-docker
docker-credential-gcr gcr-login

Pull POCS container

 docker pull gcr.io/panoptes-survey/pocs:latest

Start the POCS image

docker run -it -p 9000:9000 --name pocs gcr.io/panoptes-survey/pocs

The POCS image will automatically start Jupyter Lab running on port 9000 of your local browser. The above command should display a link that you copy and paste into your browser to get you started.

Test POCS

POCS comes with a testing suite that allows it to test that all of the software works and is installed correctly. Running the test suite by default will use simulators for all of the hardware and is meant to test that the software works correctly. Additionally, the testing suite can be run with various flags to test that attached hardware is working properly.

All of the test files live in $POCS/pocs/tests.

Software Testing

There are a few scenarios where you want to run the test suite:

1. You are getting your unit ready and want to test software is installed correctly.
2. You are upgrading to a new release of software (POCS, its dependencies or the operating system).
3. You are helping develop code for POCS and want test your code doesn't break something.

Testing your installation

In order to test your installation you should have followed all of the steps above for getting your unit ready. To run the test suite, you will need to open a terminal and navigate to the $POCS directory.

# Change to $POCS directory
(panoptes-env) $ cd $POCS

# Run the software testing
(panoptes-env) $ pytest

💡 NOTE: The test suite can take a while to run and often appears to be stalled. Check the log files to ensure activity is happening. The tests can be cancelled by pressing Ctrl-c (sometimes entering this command multiple times is required).

It is often helpful to view the log output in another terminal window while the test suite is running:

# Follow the log file
$ tail -f $PANDIR/logs/panoptes.log

The output from this will look something like:

(panoptes-env) $  pytest                                                                                                                                                     
=========================== test session starts ======================================
platform linux -- Python 3.5.2, pytest-3.2.3, py-1.4.34, pluggy-0.4.0                                                 
rootdir: /storage/panoptes/POCS, inifile:                       
plugins: cov-2.4.0                                                                                                     

collected 260 items                                                                                                                                                                                                                   
pocs/tests/test_base_scheduler.py ...............
pocs/tests/test_camera.py ........s..ssssss..................ssssssssssssssssssssssssss
pocs/tests/test_codestyle.py .
pocs/tests/test_config.py .............
pocs/tests/test_constraints.py ..............
pocs/tests/test_database.py ...
pocs/tests/test_dispatch_scheduler.py ........
pocs/tests/test_field.py ....
pocs/tests/test_focuser.py .......sssssss..
pocs/tests/test_images.py ..........
pocs/tests/test_ioptron.py .
pocs/tests/test_messaging.py ....
pocs/tests/test_mount_simulator.py ..............
pocs/tests/test_observation.py .................
pocs/tests/test_observatory.py ................s.......
pocs/tests/test_pocs.py ..........................
pocs/tests/test_utils.py .............
pocs/tests/bisque/test_dome.py ssss
pocs/tests/bisque/test_mount.py sssssssssss
pocs/tests/bisque/test_run.py s

=========================== 203 passed, 57 skipped, 6 warnings in 435.76 seconds ===================================

Here you can see that certain tests were skipped (s) for various reasons while the others passed. Skipped tests are skipped on purpose and thus are not considered failures. Usually tests are skipped because there is no attached hardware (see below for running tests with hardware attached). All passing tests are represented by a single period (.) and any failures would show as a F. If there are any failures while running the tests the output from those failures will be displayed.

Testing your code changes

💡 NOTE: This step is meant for people helping with software development

The testing suite will automatically be run against any code committed to our github repositories. However, the test suite should also be run locally before pushing to github. This can be done either by running the entire test suite as above or by running an individual test related to the code you are changing. For instance, to test the code related to the cameras one can run:

(panoptes-env) $ pytest -xv pocs/tests/test_camera.py

Here the -x option will stop the tests upon the first failure and the -v makes the testing verbose.

Any new code should also include proper tests. See below for details.

Writing tests

All code changes should include tests. We strive to maintain a high code coverage and new code should necessarily maintain or increase code coverage.

For more details see the Writing Tests page.

Hardware Testing

Hardware testing uses the same testing suite as the software testing but with additional options passed on the command line to signify what hardware should be tested.

The options to pass to pytest is --with-hardware, which accepts a list of possible hardware items that are connected. This list includes camera, mount, and weather. Optionally you can use all to test a fully connected unit.

⚠️ The hardware tests do not perform safety checking of the weather or dark sky. The weather test mentioned above tests if a weather station is connected but does not test the safety conditions. It is assumed that hardware testing is always done with direct supervision.

# Test an attached camera
pytest --with-hardware=camera

# Test an attached camera and mount
pytest --with-hardware=camera,mount

# Test a fully connected unit
pytest --with-hardware=all

In Progress

Use POCS

For running a unit

• Polar alignment test

For helping develop POCS software

See Coding in PANOPTES

Links

• PANOPTES Homepage: http://projectpanoptes.org
• Source Code: http://github.com/panoptes/POCS