Startup of BCSpec

At the telescope:

Turn on the CCD power supply if it has been turned off because of the threat of lightning. The switch is located on the gray electronics box labeled "BCSpec" that is hung on the east side instrument rotator (if the rotator is in its nominal position of 90°; i.e., the rotator angle that results in an E-W orientation of the spectrograph slit).
CAUTION: Make sure that this switch is in the OFF position if a lightning threat develops.

In the control room on the "bok" computer:

Log into the bokobs account. The password is located on the whiteboard in the control room. If this is the first night of your observing run, it is highly recommended that you reset the bokobs account to delete data files placed on the disk by previous BCSpec users. During your run, be VERY careful using the reset bokobs command. Make sure that you have archived all of your data on another machine, data tape, CD, and/or DVD since resetting the account will DELETE all of your data on bok. If you decide to change the bokobs password, make sure that you accurately record the new password on the whiteboard in the control room.
In a terminal window, start the Opto22 server by typing optoserver .
In another terminal window on bok, start the data server by typing dataserver. CAUTION: Make sure that there are no ds9 display windows on the desktop before staring the dataserver script. The script will create a ds9 display window for you and this is where your CCD exposures will be automatically displayed.

In the control room on the "bokccd" computer:

Start AzCam by clicking on the "StartBCSpec" icon on the bokccd desktop.
You can now use the main control panel of AzCam to set data storage paths, detector parameters, selected image header values, and acquire data. The AzCam system is quite intuitive and its User's Guide (PDF Version) offers a good overview of its functionality.
Observers typically set the data storage path so that images are transferred to the 'bok' computer. However, one is able to write images to a directory on 'bokccd' instead. This option is especially useful in the event that you are experiencing network communication problems between the two machines.

NOTE: Generally, the instrument and data acquisition are controlled from the bokccd keyboard and mouse, while images are saved, displayed, and manipulated by the observer on bok. Observers have the option of displaying the bokccd desktop on bok and therefore controlling all aspects of the instrument and data collection using the bok keyboard and mouse. To do this, type: vncviewer bokccd in a terminal window on bok. You will be asked for a password which is simply the name of the computer whose desktop you wish to display (all lower case). One can resize the vncviewer window as desired, but be aware that this window will not update AzCamTool exposure and readout countdown clocks in a way that even remotely approximates "real time". These updates are much faster on the bokccd display.