• Nombre Proyecto : SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT FOR ALMA: BUILDING UP EXPERTISE TO MEET ALMA SOFTWARE REQUIREMENTS WITHIN A CHILEAN UNIVERSITY
  
• Número : 31060008
  
• Año Concurso : 2006
  
• Nombre Concurso : FONDO ALMA PARA EL DESARROLLO DE LA ASTRONOMÍA
  
• Duración : 3 años
  

The present project aims at building up expertise on software development in areas critical to ALMA at the Universidad Técnica Federico Santa María. ALMA requirements include the continuing development of the ACS (ALMA Common Software) framework, and a variety of packages working on it, mostly as real-time monitoring and control applications. It should be noted that ACS is an open source, generic framework for real-time, distributed control applications. One of the aims is to promote ACS in other areas, not just astronomy, in order to broaden its developer and user base. We will develop several small applications on ACS, both as examples and for day-to-day use, make ACS more convenient to use, and research on some of the principal uses of ACS in telescope control.
Our objectives include:

• Technology exchange with ALMA through joint work, short courses and talks
  
• Training new engineers in the technology by including ACS in courses at the Universidad
  
• Development of ACS use examples and training material
  
• Develop simple ACS programs for production use
  
• Repack ACS to make it more convenient to use
  
• Analyze the real-time requirements of ACS, and propose alternatives for the real-time operating system in current use
  
• Use ACS to construct a generic telescope control system (gTCS), creating a solid base for further development of such systems (which are currently tailor made for each new instrument)
  
• Create an environment to simulate a telescope as a testing harness for ACS software and as a starting point for a training platform for telescope operators