The revised paper Dispatch Scheduling of Automated Telescopes is now available for review. This paper was originally presented at the Society of Astronomical Sciences conference in Big Bear CA, on May 26, 2004. It was revised in 2006 to reflect changes in Scheduler 2.0
ACPS has a facility for importing observing requests in Robotic Telescope Markup Language (an XML format). DC-3 Dreams was a primary participant in the development of RTML at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratories.
For ACPS, we have extended the standard V2.1 RTML (to V2.3) to include elements that allow access to all of ACPS' features, but ACPS can also import standard RTML 2.1.
ACP Planner can directly export RTML, so if it meets your needs, you can use it to generate plans for ACP Scheduler. In addition, Scheduler comes with some planning scripts that generate RTML. The RTML is then imported into the database using the database browser.
It's not practical to write RTML by hand! ACPS comes with a scriptable component that implements an object model for RTML 2.3, and which can be used by planning tools (such as ACP Planner) to generate the XML for you.
The Windows Help Documentation for the XML_RTML23 component is available for downloading. Here is the Full Schema Diagram of the XML Schema for an overall view. The XML Schema itself is also available. You can also look at the detailed graphical documentation for the Schema.
| DOWNLOAD ACP SCHEDULER 2.0 (60 day trial) |
| PURCHASE A LICENSE FOR ACP SCHEDULER |
This is the web site for ACP Scheduler (ACPS), a companion program to ACP Observatory Control Software (ACP). ACPS is a "just in time" scheduler, able to cope with varying observing conditions and requests added during a run.
Observing requests and their constraints are entered into a database via a schedule browser or RTML batch import. Version 2 advances ACPS to the forefront of dispatch schedulers; its new "rising plan delay" algorithm solves a major problem shared by all others, including those used in large professional observatories.
A separate scheduler engine dequeues requests and feeds them to ACP Observatory Control Software for data acquisition. The combination of ACP and ACPS run autonomously, starting and stopping observing at astronomical twilight.
Requires Windows 2000 or Windows XP and at least 512 MB of RAM, or Windows Vista with 1GB of RAM.
If you wish to test ACPS, you can do so in simulation mode without any other software. However, if you want to do "live" testing, you need ACP Observatory Control Software (V5 or later only!) and MaxIm DL/CCD V4.5x or later . Both are available for free evaluation.
Once you have installed the required components (see above) you can download and install the ACP Scheduler package. This is a 60 day trial package which can be unlocked by purchasing a license. The ACP Scheduler installer requires Windows Installer, which you should already have. Please direct all questions to the DC-3 Dreams Communication Center in the Pre-Sales area. Here is the download link:
ACPS was put to the test with the Messier Marathon 2004. It got all 110 targets. Here are the details.
If this web page looks very old fashioned and plain, you are using a very old browser. The 3-column layout is visible only in browsers which support the web standards that were put into place in 1998, nine years ago!
We are sorry but we can no longer support ancient browsers or applications that are not consistent with long-established internet standards.
