Electronics & Software

Flexcam software was designed to allow continuous monitoring of the mechanical deformation of the telescope structure at Palomar Observatory. Flexcam allows the user to watch the motion of a star with a low-cost astronomical camera, to measure the motion of the star on the image plane, and to feed...

Anyone who has worked with programs such as Linux, Firefox, and Open Office is familiar with the concept of open-source software. Essentially, open-source software distributes programs and all of the underlying code for free. It's an interesting concept that has become quite popular in the engineering world but, until now, is...

People typically develop knowledge bases in a somewhat ad hoc manner by incrementally adding rules with no specific organization. This often results in a very inefficient execution of those rules since they are so often order sensitive. This is relevant to tasks like Deep Space Network in...

The Project Integration Architecture (PIA) is a distributed, object- oriented, conceptual, software framework for the generation, organization, publication, integration, and consumption of all information involved in any complex technological process in a manner that is intelligible to both computers and humans. As...

A document discusses the creation of a high-voltage power supply (HVPS) that is able to contain voltages up to –20 kV, keep electrical field strengths to below 200 V/mil (≈7.87 kV/mm), and can provide a 200- nanosecond rise/fall time focus modulator swinging between cathode potential of 16.3 kV and –19.3...

An electronics architecture has been developed to enable the rapid construction and testing of prototypes of robotic systems. This architecture is designed to be a research vehicle of great stability, reliability, and versatility. A system according to this architecture can easily be reconfigured (including expanded...