Changes

This is the current user manual for SpUpNIC (Spectrograph Upgrade - Newly Improved Cassegrain), the recently upgraded spectrograph at the 1.9-m telescope's Cassegrain focus. We plan to produce instructional video clips and a more comprehensively illustrated wiki once the software has stopped evolving and the remaining modifications have been made to the system. See the [https://topswiki.saao.ac.za/images_topswiki.saao.ac.za/3/3e/SpUpNIC_2016.pdf SpUpNIC paper] presented at the 2016 SPIE Astronomical Telescopes and Instrumentation conference in Edinburgh for more information.

The spectrograph's collimator and camera optics have been replaced, the instrument has a new detector, all of the mechanisms are now under PLC control and the software (both for instrument control + quick-look data reduction) has been completely re-written. There is also a rear-of-slit camera that makes it easier to acquire targets and focus the telescope properly.

The instrument has two sub-systems, the PLC sub-system (controlling everything that moves) and the detector sub-system (controlling the data acquisition process). The drivers for these sub-systems run as stand-alone processes, and the user interface runs as a separate process on top of these. Typically, users will connect to the graphical user interface (GUI), although certain diagnostic functions may be accessed using the command line interfaces.

We hope that you'll enjoy using SpUpNIC and that you'll be willing to provide the instrument team with feedback and suggestions by emailing lisa(at)saao.ac.za.