SFScon14: ALMA Telescopes powered by RTAI Linux

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South Tyrol Free Software Conference

Talk by Dietrich Pescoller about "ALMA Telescopes powered by RTAI Linux" during the SFScon14

Technology

ALMA
● Cosa è?
● E' il più grande osservatorio radio
astronomico al mondo
● Atacama Large Millimiter/submillimiter
Array
● Deserto dell'Atacama nel Cile a 5000 metri
● Collaborazione tra Europa, Nord America,
Est Asia, con partecipazione del Cile

ALMA
● 66 radiotelescopi di cui:
● 54 con una parabola da 12 metri di
diametro
● 12 con una parabola da 7 metri
● Altissime prestazioni e precisione
● Più di 10 anni di sviluppo
● Inaugurato ufficialmente nel 2013 e dal
2011 produce risultati scientifici

ALMA
● Tutti i 66 telescopi osservano in modo
sincrono
● I radio telescopi possono essere
riposizionati
(l'array può essere riconfigurato)
● Distanze possono andare da
150 metri
fino a
16 kilometri

Riconfigurazione Array
Per il riposizionamento viene usato:
● Uno speciale transporter
– Lunghezza di 20 metri
– Larghezza di 10 metri
– Altezza 6 metri
– 28 ruote motrici
– Peso 130 tonnellate

ACU
● Microgate s.r.l. di Bolzano
ha fatto la progettazione e realizzazione
della ACU e del sistema di metrologia
termica e dinamica
● ACU (Antenna Control Unit)
Il “cervello” del telescopio

RTAI
● ACU è interamente basata sul sistema
operativo RTAI
● Non solo anche la ABM (Antenna Bus
Master) è basata su RTAI
● RTAI Real-Time Application Interface
● È un estensione per il Kernel Linux
sviluppato al Politecnico di Milano dal team
del Prof. Paolo Mantegazza

Hardware ACU
● Sistema VME
● CPU Intel Pentium M 1.1GHz
RAM Memory 512 MB
● Varie schede per la comunicazione con
periferiche
● I/O Digitali, Seriali, Schede di
interpolazione etc.
Sistema affidabile: temperature e altezza

ALMA
ABM
Antenna Bus Master
ACU
RTAI
ACUACU ACU
RTAI

Sistema motore
Direct Drive
● 36 Nodi motore
● 20 Azimuth
● 8 Elevation
● 4 Power Supply
● 4 Sensori Hall
AZ 56000 Nm
EL 34000 Nm

Sistema Encoder
● 3 Sistemi di interpolazione
● 8 Testine ottiche per AZ
● 4 Testine ottiche per EL
● Contact less

Metrologia
● Metrologia Termica
● 100 sensori di temperatura
di precisione <0.15°C

Metrologia
● Compensazione dinamica vento
● 2 Inclinometri sviluppati ad Hoc
(MicroCline)
● Risoluzione:
0.1 microradianti
equivale a
● 1 mm su 10 km!!!

Svariati Task
● Centinaia di segnali I/O per
– Sicurezza, Stow Pin, Freni, Fine Corsa...
● Controllo Hexapod
● Controllo Temperatura Cabina
● Gestione PCU (Portable Control Unit)
● Interfaccia utente
● Diagnostica

Alcuni dati
● Precisione di puntamento
meglio di: 0.6 arcsec
1 grado equivale: a 3600 arcsecondi
● ABM comando ogni 48 ms
● ACU interpola e calcola la traiettoria
ottimale. Ogni 2 ms:
– acquisisce tutte le testine
– calcola la coppia motori

Conclusione: Vantaggi RTAI
● Free software
● Accesso al codice
● Controllo completo
● Adattabilità (nessuna black box)
● Ottima performance
● Stabilità e affidabilità
● Ottimo supporto da mailing list

SFScon14: ALMA Telescopes powered by RTAI Linux

The complexity of agricultural droughts requires a consistent, reliable, and systematic method for monitoring and reporting. Amongst the various indices used to monitor this phenomenon, the soil moisture anomaly has been proven to be a more reliable predictor. However, the datasets required for computing this index are often large and computationally demanding. To address this challenge, we have developed SMODEX, a Python package that enables scalable, fast, and open-source standard-compliant computation and visualization of soil moisture anomalies. SMODEX simplifies the computation and visualization of time-series for soil moisture and soil moisture anomalies from high-dimensional climate datasets. It allows for quick and easy parallelization of the computation on a daily, weekly, and monthly timescale. Additionally, SMODEX implements a straightforward workflow for automating the use of FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable) principles in producing and sharing outputs by leveraging the open source STAC API. The package is extendible and provides information on how to contribute to the project, test suites, test coverage, and a use case for the South Tyrol region, all provided in the package repository. In the future, additional agricultural drought indices and indicators would be included to serve to even larger community of researchers, policy makers, and individual users.

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SFSCON23 - Martin Rabanser - Real-time aeroplane tracking and the Open Data Hub

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Tracking aeroplanes in real time with Open Source Software is possible. Aircrafts must continuously send their current flight parameters to air traffic controllers on the ground and to other aircrafts. This generates a lot of data, especially when planes are being tracked by multiple sensors. The Open Data Hub on the other hand offers a great backbone for data storing and processing, where the correct datasets have to be identified and filtered. After all transformation on the data is done, it will be exposed via API to be further used by a web application. Bringing together sensor generated data, the Open Data Hub and custom web applications, is a showcase on how the Open Data Hub can be used as a service: OaaS.

SFSCON23 - Marianna d'Atri Enrico Zanardo - How can Blockchain technologies i...

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The transition from Web 2.0 to Web 3.0 has fueled the need for a secure and decentralized cloud storage solution for digital assets. Web 2.0 was characterized by centralized platforms where user data was under the control of companies. In contrast, Web 3.0 aims to empower individuals and foster a decentralized web that supports and benefits the Free Software and Open Data Communities. Blockchain technologies facilitate seamless collaboration and interoperability among diverse stakeholders in the Free Software and Open Data communities. Developers can establish open and transparent ecosystems where data can be shared, verified, and integrated across multiple platforms. Beez, with its own blockchain infrastructure, offers a secure and transparent platform for digital asset exchanges, bolstering transaction integrity and trust. By distributing data across a network of nodes, Beez ensures security and mitigates the risk of single points of failure. Users retain control over their data, safeguard their privacy, and can take advantage of the incentive mechanisms offered by blockchain networks. During our presentation, we will explore the role of AI within Beez's ecosystem, facilitating accelerated data processing, correlation, and intelligent automation. AI unlocks valuable insights from blockchain data, and we will touch upon the use of Inductive Logic Programming (ILP) to enhance programming performance. The integration of Blockchain and AI technologies holds great potential for advancing the safety and efficiency of the Open Data ecosystem. By combining decentralized data storage, trust-building mechanisms, and intelligent data processing, Beez is paving the way for a more secure, transparent, and user-centric digital landscape.

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We are becoming more and more dependent on the Internet for our work, education, communication, personal relations and entertainment. Our digital devices conquered an unprecedented level of importance in our life. However, we are facing a loss of control over our smartphones, tablets and other devices for internet connection. It's time to resolve monopolies and re-establish democratic control over the technology we most depend upon. This talk will present the challenges end-users are facing to get more control over their devices and how Free Software is key for a consumer re-empowerement. The talk will present real-life examples of policy demands against gatekeepers on digital markets, such as the struggle for Router Freedom in the last years and how Device Neutrality can serve as an important instrument for pushing forward end-user-oriented digital policies.

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MOSH and MOAH are the abbreviation of two groups of chemical compounds found in mineral oils. “MOSH” stands for Mineral Oil Saturated Hydrocarbons. MOAH stands for Mineral Oil Aromatic Hydrocarbons. Both of them are under European deeply evaluation because there are two food contaminants. According to the current state of scientific knowledge, there is no sufficient toxicological evidence to prove a health risk to humans from saturated mineral oil fractions (MOSH). Meanwhile, MOAH are suspected to be carcinogenic (especially PAH-like compounds with 3-7 ring systems), therefore their levels in food should be reduced according to the ALARA-principle (as low as reasonably achievable). Gruppo FOS with CNR ( MOSH and MOAH are the abbreviation of two groups of chemical compounds found in mineral oils. “MOSH” stands for Mineral Oil Saturated Hydrocarbons. MOAH stands for Mineral Oil Aromatic Hydrocarbons. Both of them are under European deeply evaluation because there are two food contaminants. According to the current state of scientific knowledge, there is no sufficient toxicological evidence to prove a health risk to humans from saturated mineral oil fractions (MOSH). Meanwhile, MOAH are suspected to be carcinogenic (especially PAH-like compounds with 3-7 ring systems), therefore their levels in food should be reduced according to the ALARA-principle (as low as reasonably achievable). Gruppo FOS with CNR (Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche), Santagata 1907 and Enginius are searching the system for finding and trace their presence in the virgin and extra virgin olive oils by using open fingerprints methods, open hardware and open source blockchain and AI technologies.

SFSCON23 - Elena Maines - Embracing CI/CD workflows for building ETL pipelines

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Up-to date measurements of surface meteorological variables are essential to monitor weather conditions, their spatio-temporal variability and the potential effects on a wide range of sectors and applications. Moreover, when included in continuous records of long historical observations spanning several decades, they become essential for assessing long-term climate variability and change locally and on a regional level. Automated pipelines capable of retrieving and processing near-real time meteorological data satisfy the primary prerequisites towards the development and advancement of effective and operational climate services. With a public and operational near real-time monitoring web platform in mind, we present automated pipelines to collect and process up-to-date daily temperature and precipitation records for Trentino South Tyrol (Italy) and surrounding areas, and to derive their spatially interpolated fields at sub-km scale. Our pipelines are composed by multiple steps including data download, sanity checks, reconstruction of missing daily records, integration into the historical archive, spatial interpolation and publication onto online FAIR catalogues as (openEO) “datacubes”. The different APIs, data formats and structure across the various data sources, and the need to merge the data onto harmonized meteorological layers, make this a typical case of the so-called Extract, Transform and Load (ETL) pipelines, and, in order to follow the principles of data reproducibility and Open Science, we embraced open-source automated workflow management through GitLab’s Continuous Integration / Continuous Development (CI/CD) capabilities. CI/CD workflows greatly help the management of the relatively complex graphs of tasks required for our climate application, ensuring seamless orchestration with thorough flow monitoring, application logs, transactions rollbacks, and exception handling in general. Native pipeline-oriented software development also fosters a clean separation of roles among the tasks, and a more modular architecture. This effectively reduces barriers to collaborative development and paves the way for robust operational climate services for researchers and decision makers in the face of the changing climate.

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The Open Science movement aims to increase the transparency, reproducibility and inclusiveness of academic research. One of its central goals is therefore to make research outputs broadly available, e.g., manuscripts (Open Access) or research data (Open Data). While software/code created in the course of scientific research is a key artifact of scientific research that is clear distinct from the latter two, it has until recently not received the same attention as manuscripts or data, although it follows its own set of paradigms. In this talk I will present an overview on how the core concepts of Free Software and the FAIR (findable, accessible, interoperable, reuseable) Principles intersect, what this means for managing code as research output and recent initiatives on the European level that will provide support for these issues.

SFSCON23 - Charles H. Schulz - Why open digital infrastructure matters

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Software freedom can be defined in many ways but in legal terms it is squarely defined by a set of approved FSF and OSI software licenses. Yet everyone realizes that beyond these licenses the goal of software freedom and digital sovereignty cannot be achieved without the ability to master and create hardware components and systems - and beyond that, to rely on open digital infrastructure (servers, datacenters, and resources) . This talk will present the challenges around these topics and what we, collectively in Europe already do and can do to ensure our independence and our freedoms.

SFSCON23 - Andrea Vianello - Achieving FAIRness with EDP-portal

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EDP-portal is the access point to the Environmental Data Platform of Eurac Research since 2021 to achieve FAIRness of our datasets. It allows to publish data and metadata and provides APIs and web services for data access. In the last 2 years the EDP improved the findability and accessibility of the data collected throughout the curation of metadata that was improved with the DOI registration for datasets. The result is a higher metadata quality where the final user can easily find how to properly cite datasets with a persistent identifier. The portal itself and main data repositories are registered in FAIR-sharing portal with their own DOI. The SW components of the EDP are totally based on open source projects.

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