Project Argos - date line

Dates in green marks major progress.

000901 Attempt to power up telescope failed. Seems that the fuse on the power supply was burnt. Bypassing the fuse shows no extraordinary current consumption - but the scope still does not move. Apparently the control circuits are defective.
001015 The controller circuits removed from setup for repairs
001024 Attempted repair of RA controller circuit: Opto couplers and Darlington transistors replaced. However, the circuit STILL does not work. I am at a loss.
001113 Søren Jessen has repaired the RA and Dec controller circuits. Apparently the fault, I couldn't find, was in the soldering of the connector. The Dec unit also had Opto couplers and Darlingtons replaced.

Furthermore Søren improved the design by placing a red/green LED on the board, to indicate the direction the motor is running.

Thank you for helping, Søren!
010113 Downloaded the source to v2.2.18 of the Linux kernel and the source to v.3.0 of RTLinux.
010114 Linux kernel recompiled and installed. My netcard does not work anymore :-(
010115 Netcard problems fixed by compiling the netcard driver as a module and inserting the statement modprobe eth0 near bottom of file /etc/rc.d/rc.sysinit
I don't know why this is necessary - it wasn't with the kernel distributed with Redhat 6.0
010116 Pathed the Linux kernel with RTLinux extensions. Compiled and installed both kernel and RTLinux. The test programs supplied with RTLinux work!

The base real time OS is now ready. I can start developing applications.
010120 Started developing a prototype of the Control Module. Making prototypes i C and C++
010122 A minimum prototype of the Control Module written in C++ is now operational. Expanding it with FIFO communication to Linux mode applications.
010123 Developing a test application that talks to the Control Module through a named pipe (FIFO). Its a simple text mode application using curses.
010206 The documentation goes online.

Henrik Persson