Object oriented software design for the Mt. Wilson 100-inch Hooker telescope adaptive optics system

The object oriented software design paradigm has been instrumental in the development of the Adoptics software used in the Hooker telescope’s ADOPT adaptive optics system 2, . The software runs on a Pentium-class PC host and eight DSP processors connected to the host’s motherboard bus. C++ classes were created to implement most of the host software’s functionality, with the object oriented features of inheritance, encapsulation and abstraction being the most useful. Careful class design at the inception of the project allowed for the rapid addition of features without comprising the integrity of the software. Base class implementations include the DSP system, real-time graphical displays and opto-mechanical actuator control. Although the DSP software is written in C and assembler, the DSP system is exposed within the host’s C++ software as a DSP system class, a DSP board class and a DSP site class. The DSP system class encapsulates the entire DSP system and is the single point of interface between that system and the host. All host user interface elements are implemented as classes built on the Borland OWL windowing class library. The most significant base classes in the host software are the real-time graphical display class and the opto-mechanical actuator control class.