Chimera Quick Start

Chimera provides a few features to make your life easier when getting started with the system, using:

• reasonable defaults
• no configuration to get started with fake devices
• minimum boilerplate on command line once configured
• an easy to read/write configuration format: YAML: YAML Ain’t Markup Language.

you will start using Chimera very quickly.

Once installed, Chimera provides a few command line programs:

• chimera
• chimera-tel
• chimera-cam
• chimera-dome
• chimera-focus
• chimera-admin

Without any configuration, those programs will use fake devices, some kind of simulator. This way you can test the command line programs even without any real device on hands.

When configured, chimera script can be used to start and stop the system, while other chimera- programs control specific devices in a very integrated way.

Getting started

Installation

To install Chimera, in most cases, its just one command:

easy_install chimera-python

First Light

Say you want to take two frames of 10 seconds each and save to files names like fake-images-XXXX.fits:

chimera-cam --frames 2 --exptime 10 --output fake-images

Without specific configuration, Chimera will try to use device simulators instead of real hardware, to configure you real camera, edit Chimera’s configuration file:file:chimera.config:

# SBIG camera on USB port with a RGB filter set

camera:
    driver: SBIG
    device: USB
    filters: [RED, GREEN, BLUE, LUNAR, CLEAR]

After that, you can take some real images:

chimera-cam --frames 2 --exptime 10 --output real-images

Add configuration for real telescope and dome:

# Meade telescope on serial port
telescope:
    driver: Meade
    device:/dev/ttyS0

# RoboDome on serial port
dome:
    driver: DomeLNA40cm
    device: /dev/ttyS1

Start Chimera’s server mode to enable device integration:

chimera -vv

Slew the scope:

chimera-tel --slew --object M5

Dome will follow telescope position automatically. If dome still moving, chimera-cam will wait until dome finishes:

chimera-cam --frames 1 --filters R,G,B --interval 2 --exptime 30

After about one and a half minute, you’ll have three nice frames of M5 in R, G and B filters, ready to stack and make nice false color image.