Communication and protocol between the systems

[Robert White]

I have been reading your threads and I support your focus on moving towards
standardized communication between robotic telescope systems for the
VOEvent. I wanted to throw in the support of the RAPTOR team at Los Alamos
and to also pass on some information about what we have already done in
autonomous robotic telescope communication.

We have a system already in place for autonomous bi-directional
communication and alert generation between our telescopes and it is
available for providing this same support for any number of other robotic
(or conventional) telescope systems. The software is called TALONS:
Telescope Alert Operations Network  

The system operates on a central server at Los Alamos and we can provide a
software library to allow other, new clients to connect into the system to
transmit observation alert requests and/or receive alerts from the system.
Redundancy and observation filters in the library will pass on only those
alerts the client wishes to respond to and/or transmit. There is also a
separate "Monitor" executable that shows what current activities, the
clients (if they wish to transmit this information) and the alert system,
are in process. Currently, the type of data we are passing as alerts are
internally generated by the RAPTOR telescopes for their OT searches and as a
relay point for GCN alerts. 

This system has been operational and supporting the RAPTOR system for over
two years. It was conceived to expand as necessary to support additional
systems either within or outside of Los Alamos. Becoming the clearing house
for distribution of VOEvent alerts would be relatively easy for us to set
up, since the system already performs the same kind of tasks. Once an
information protocol standard is decided on for the VOEvent, we can
translate and communicate this to any of the TALONS clients easily.

We look forward to talking more about this and the VOEvent protocol at the
upcoming workshop. 


Robert R. White
Et nunc, reges, intelligite, er udimini, qui judicati terram
Los Alamos National Labs
ISR-1: Space Sciences and Applications
Optical / X-Ray Section
Astrophysics and CXD Teams
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rwhite at lanl.gov
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