Keone Hiraide graduated in spring 2011 from the University of Hawaii at Hilo with a major in Computer Science. He plans to work for a year in order to gain more experience, then enter graduate school on the mainland. He is interested in studying either informatics, databases, or systems of computing. In his spare time, Keone enjoys fishing, billiards, martial arts, golfing, camping, hiking, video games, and expanding his knowledge relating to computer science.
Home Island: Maui
High School: Kamehameha Schools Maui
Institution when accepted: University of Hawaii at Hilo
Akamai Project: Building a Central Web-based Instrument Temperature Control System for Subaru Telescope
Project Site: Subaru Telescope
Mentors: Stephen Colley & David Cook
Many instruments used at Subaru Telescope require precise temperature control for their imaging detectors and optics. Currently, each of these instruments has its own system for programming and controlling equipment. Even though each system has the same functionality of controlling temperature, they vary in quality, interface design, and characteristics. As a result, telescope operators are required to learn the unique behavior of each instrument’s system in order to maintain temperature control. The purpose of this project is to build a central temperature-control system which can program and monitor all of the controllers remotely using a central-operator web-based interface. We have designed and written a temperature-control system application using the C programming language, HTML, and StarGate, a Subaru scripting language for Web development. The instruments are connected to a terminal server by serial ports, which allows our application to send commands to the instruments through a GUI over a network or the Internet, in order to query and set various parameters to monitor and control an instrument’s temperature. Currently, our application is able to measure the temperature of Subaru’s FMOS instrument with a precision of ±0.1 K, and users are able to use the GUI to raise or lower its temperature by remote command. Future development may include the ability to monitor and control additional instrument systems, or the inclusion of additional control algorithms to further meet the needs of Subaru astronomers and instrument users.