Design of SHINS: the SHARK-NIR instrument control software

The System for coronagraphy with High Order adaptive optics in Kand H band (SHARKNIR), is a high contrast imager with coronagraphic and spectroscopic capabilities, which will be mounted at the Large Binocular Telescope (LBT). It will observe in the near infrared, between 0.96 and 1.7 microns. Its main scientific goal is the direct imaging of exo-planets, their detection and characterization, taking advantage of the adaptive optics offered by LBT. Other science objectives include brown dwarfs, protoplanetary discs, stellar jets, QSOs and AGNs. In this paper we describe the design and architecture of the SHARK-NIR instrument control software (SHINS). SHINS architecture is largely inspired to ESO VLT instrument control software: a central component dispatches commands to peripheral components dedicated to subsystems control. Observation, calibration and maintenance procedure are implemented by means of templates We also describe how communication between software components is implemented. We begin by explaining how we employed TwiceAsNice, a service oriented architecture framework, to control all the motorized functions. We also illustrate the interface to the control software for the tip/tilt subsystem, built inside SHARK-NIR and in charge of image stabilization. Then, we describe the interface implemented using the Instrument-Neutral Distributed Interface (INDI) communication protocol, which is used by SHINS to communicate both with the telescope and the scientific detector control systems.