Deadman management

The DeadMan (Homme-Mort) is implemented at La Silla in order to close the dome when the internet connection between the remote observatory (astrodome) and La Silla is down.

With an internet connection down the remote observer have no means to close the dome.

The deadman is a simple program running on the remote observatory sending un kind of pulse to the PLC controlling the telescope. This pulse reset a countdown of 20 minutes.. If the connection id down the countdown is not reseted and the PLC close the dome when the countdown reach zero.

Remark: the countdown may be reset by clicking the corresponding button on the PLC's touchscreen.

Currently we use also a Deadman at La Silla for local observation. The concept is not the best and will be improved.

The situation is:

For local observation, the crontab of the user remote on glslogin1 send a pulse every minute.

* * * * * /home/weber/anaconda3/bin/python /home/weber/src/tcs_srv/DeadManPulse.py > /home/remote/LOG_DeadMan.txt 2>&1

For local observation the crontab must be configured as above

For remote observation this line in the crontab must absolutely be commented (#)

When commented this modification must be checked by simply verify that the deadman is not cleared.

For the remote observation, the deadman must be manually started in a terminal on the remote desktop:

Log on gvanuc:

cd ~obs
./DeadMan.sh

If you are at La Silla without a working deadman (after remote observing or test) you have to restart it as describe here or in this doc.