Poster Abstract

P.5 Mattia Mancini (ASTRON)

StationMonitor: combining different tests data to provide the overview of the LOFAR array

On an operational basis, several tests are executed to assess the telescope performance and the state of its hardware. Usually, such tests are tailored to a specific purpose but, if combined, they can further improve the assessment of the conditions of the telescope or give insight on their own robustness.
Unfortunately, the results of such tests are often stored in custom data formats and scattered throughout the system. Therefore, a deep understanding of the data format itself is often required to read them. Additionally, there generally is a lack of tools exist to present a nice view complicating the correlation and analysis of the data for the user.
The station test and the RTSM (Real-Time Station Monitor) have been used during the years to gauge the conditions of the LOFAR stations' hardware. The former is a weekly performed thorough test while the latter is executed during the observation and provides insight into the antennas participating in the observation. Moreover, the maintenance operations and the history of the antenna statuses during an observation have to been included to complete the picture of the station conditions.
To this aim, we have built the StationMonitor. The StationMonitor consists of a Django layer to provide access to the data in the database through a REST interface, a series of programs that acts as translators from the preexistent data, and a web interface to display the result.
Here, we will present the methodology used and the lessons learned.