Control of a Radio-Telescope via the Internet

We have demonstrated that a radio-telescope antenna used by Astronomers can be accessed and controlled remotely via the Internet. Two powerful dc motors, both azimuth and elevation drives of the telescope have been used for accurate positioning of the antenna. LabVIEW software together with some National Instrument's (NI) hardware such as signal accessory board and data acquisition board has been used as the main vehicle for the drive system. A LabVIEW virtual instrument (VI) program has been developed to control the accurate positioning of the telescope based on the desired input parameters. The built-in Internet developer toolkit in LabVIEW has made it easy for remote access and control via the Internet. The preliminary results are very encouraging with an accuracy of within 3% easily achieved