Skip site navigation (1)Skip section navigation (2)
Date:      Mon, 10 Feb 1997 02:53:30 +1030 (CST)
From:      Michael Smith <msmith@atrad.adelaide.edu.au>
To:        kimc@w8hd.org (Kim Culhan)
Cc:        chat@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: Wradar!
Message-ID:  <199702091623.CAA18358@genesis.atrad.adelaide.edu.au>
In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSF.3.95.970209093654.29937B-100000@moonpie.w8hd.org> from Kim Culhan at "Feb 9, 97 09:38:44 am"

next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
Kim Culhan stands accused of saying:
> > 
> > > Would be nice if you could place the sticker there and maybe a link
> > > which points to a page describing your machine ?
> 
> Yes, what part of the system do the FreeBSD machines control ?

All of it; the transmitter is 12x6kw phase-controlled power blocks
driving 6 independent clusters of the array (144 elements total), each
of the power blocks is hung off an RS-485 bus run by the BSD box.

On the receiver side, the receivers are also on the '485 bus, and the data 
acquisition system (12 channels at 6Ms/s) is run off a dual 16-bit 
digital I/O card in the same BSD box.

The system is a 120MHz pentium with 64M of memory and a 2G disk (local
spool only 8) Here's a few salient observations (note that the system
is currently suffering SCSI problems that limit its uptime to a few
days at most) :

mstradar:/home/radar>uptime
 5:16PM  up 4 days,  3:36, 1 user, load averages: 0.38, 0.48, 0.48
mstradar:/home/radar>ps aux
USER       PID %CPU %MEM   VSZ  RSS  TT  STAT STARTED       TIME COMMAND
radar      181 40.4  0.0  3768 2492  ??- RN   Wed01PM  863:13.79 exptd: experim
radar      203  6.8  0.0 13036 9632  ??  RN   Wed01PM  1538:45.94 /usr/local/rs

The first of those is the acquisition program, the second is the analysis.
Here's a few days of raw data :

mstradar:/bifrost/data1>ls -l
total 2628832
-rw-r--r--  1 radar  sys    159207984 Feb  7 00:55 19970206_fca_1200.raw
-rw-r--r--  1 radar  sys    572187600 Feb  7 01:01 19970206_fca_300.raw
-rw-r--r--  1 radar  sys    159207984 Feb  8 00:56 19970207_fca_1200.raw
-rw-r--r--  1 radar  sys    572187600 Feb  8 01:01 19970207_fca_300.raw
-rw-r--r--  1 radar  sys    159207984 Feb  9 00:57 19970208_fca_1200.raw
-rw-r--r--  1 radar  sys    572187600 Feb  9 01:01 19970208_fca_300.raw
-rw-r--r--  1 radar  sys    108164208 Feb  9 17:16 19970209_fca_1200.raw
-rw-r--r--  1 radar  sys    388096688 Feb  9 17:18 19970209_fca_300.raw

> > If/when I/we put something up on our 'real' homepage, I'll certainly
> > submit it - this was just an FYI, not a grab for ad space.  (Hmm, how
> > many -chat readers are likely to be looking for an MST+ radar system?
> > 8)
> 
> Hmm.. I'd like one, whats the price range ? :)

Thet depends on how ambitious you want to get 8) A small system may
run you a lot less than US$100K, for a big site like Esrange you'll be
spending lots on earthworks and antennae, and the gear itself will
pale by comparison 8)

-- 
]] Mike Smith, Software Engineer        msmith@gsoft.com.au             [[
]] Genesis Software                     genesis@gsoft.com.au            [[
]] High-speed data acquisition and      (GSM mobile)     0411-222-496   [[
]] realtime instrument control.         (ph)          +61-8-8267-3493   [[
]] Unix hardware collector.             "Where are your PEZ?" The Tick  [[



Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?199702091623.CAA18358>