A TART telescope consists of some telescope hardware connected to a Raspberry Pi. Installing your own TART telescope requires several steps:
- Building and the telescope hardware
- Installing the TART software on the Raspberry Pi
- Connecting to the TART via web interface
- Radio Testing
- Set up radio receiver array. This is typically done in a reasonably radio-quiet place.
- Calibrating the telescope.
If you are interested in building the telescope contact tim@elec.ac.nz, as we have printed circuit boards, and other components that we are willing to give to anyone interested in deploying their own telescope.
Hardware documentation can be found in hardware/README.md.
The telescope software runs on three different computers.
- A Raspberry Pi (Model 3 or 4) which is plugged into the TART basestation board. This runs the telescope web API server.
- A calibration server which is a fast desktop that runs a calibration routine at regular intervals (every few hours)
- An optional object position server. This is a server that provides a catalog of known objects and their elevation/azimuth for any point on earth. A public one is available so you'll only need to provide your own server if you're running a process that requires low-latency access to this information.
Information on installation of software can be found in software/README.md.
Radio testing should be performed after the software has been installed on the raspberry pi, and verification is usually done through the web interface.
Once the telescope can be accessed via its web interface, the telescope hardware should be put out in a suitable location. Then the calibration procedure should be followed. This requires two steps that are outlined in the calibration documentation.
- Using the web_api from remote computers to gather data.