Automatic Operation

How to set up your PANOPTES unit automated nightly operation

Overview

Most of the time the unit should be started in automatic mode, which just means that POCS will make the decisions about when to start and stop operations (based on safety conditions), what targets to observe (based on the scheduler and the constraints), and how the data is handled during cleanup.

Make sure you have done the following:

• Set the Configuration properly.

• Checked that all the Services are running.

• Performed all the appropriate Testing.

Automatic operation

Assuming everything is set up properly, running POCS in automatic mode is simple:

pocs run auto

This command will block for as long as the unit is running, so it should be done in a tmux (or byobu) session so it can live longer than your ssh session.

You can also view the detailed logs (in a separate tmux / byobu pane or window) with:

# Follow the log file in a terminal.
tail -F logs/panoptes.log

Using simulators

You can use simulators with the pocs run commands, passing a -s (or --simulator) option for each piece of hardware you need to simulate:

pocs run -s power -s night -s weather run

The possible list of simulators is:

• power

• weather

• night

• mount

• cameras

The mount and cameras simulators are not very robust.

Note that you are passing the options to pocs run and not to pocs run auto, e.g.: pocs run -s mount auto and NOT: pocs run auto -s mount