Searching for Exoplanets with Node-Red

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MINERVA Australis, a robotic telescope array dedicated to exoplanet research

How about using Node-Red to automate a multi-million dollar telescope array research facility ?

See my post on reddit on how we used Node-Red for this purpose. It doesn't go too much in details, but there are a few flows screenshots :slight_smile:

Cheers

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One word: wow

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Awesome stuff! Tomorrow's headline; node-red found aliens !? :alien:

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If only we could get them to contribute code :slight_smile:
(I mean the :alien:s )

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Really cool stuff! I'm fascinated by the diversity of use-cases of Node-RED. :+1:

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I'm sure they are on an early version. :milky_way:

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Just an update on this guys, we are running now the automation on latest NodeRed (in a docker container btw) and already two (or three?) science papers have been published. The system hangs on nicely (as it always does) and we have been using Dashboard however are rewriting a user interface using the UI elements of the GoDot game engine (more on this later).

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:popcorn: .

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A few updates on what i've been doing since all this time. Watch out, LOTS of screenshots :slight_smile:

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Some fun with Splunk :slight_smile:

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So at this stage just FYI we are doing follow up of the NASA TESS Mission (can't say more :smiley: ) with ground-based telescopes.

In terms of system architecture, main server is linux and hosts a central N-R instance (along with nginx/grafana/influxdb/splunk friends), then each telescope is attached to a NUC running windows with another N-R instance (same flow for each scope), and finally the Spectrograph has its own N-R instance. Weather station and allsky cameras have their own PC, windows, with data and images exposed locally by IIS (accessed by main server). Domes have their own IP Camera.

All N-R logging goes to splunk; System metrics are gathered using Telegraf on both linux and windows. Network health is monitored using PTRG. Node red on main runs in docker, with extras like Python and Powershell Core. Unfortunately as some Astro libraries are only available in Python, no choice but to execute python code either using a plugin directly into nodered or using an exec node (if it's in a separate file). Powershell core talks to the windows PCs in the domes (which have the telescope connected to) via (remote powershell over SSH).

Things runs smooth :ok_hand:

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