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.
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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.
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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.