TychoCam™
Safety Monitor Administration
Safety Monitor Settings
The Safety Monitor is implemented in compliance with the ASCOM ALPACA SafetyMonitor specification and provides a standardized interface for reporting whether site conditions are considered safe for observatory operation.
Safety status is determined by evaluating measured environmental and observational parameters against administrator-defined boundary conditions, using values provided by the ALPACA ObservingConditions interface.
Operation and Integration
The Safety Monitor API is intended for use by desktop observatory control applications and automation software. Client applications may query the Safety Monitor state and take appropriate action, such as suspending observations, closing enclosures, or disabling equipment, based on the reported safety status.
The Safety Monitor reports a single Boolean value (IsSafe) that reflects the current site safety state as determined by the configured conditions.
Administrative Override
At any time, the system administrator may manually force the Safety Monitor state to unsafe, regardless of measured values. When an override is active, the Safety Monitor reports IsSafe = False until the override is cleared.
Configurable Safety Conditions
The ASCOM ALPACA specification defines 13 observing condition parameters that may be used to determine site safety. Any subset of these parameters may be enabled by the system administrator and assigned boundary thresholds.
For each enabled condition, the administrator defines acceptable operating limits. If any enabled parameter exceeds its configured limits, the Safety Monitor state is set to unsafe.
The administrator may also manually force the Safety Monitor state to unsafe regardless of measured conditions, for example during site maintenance or testing activities.
The available safety conditions are:
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Evaluation Interval
All enabled safety conditions are evaluated at a fixed interval of 30 seconds, providing timely detection of changing environmental conditions and allowing rapid response by observatory control systems.
