LabVIEW-based data communication in LAMOST telescope

The Large sky Area Multi-Object fiber Spectroscopic Telescope (LAMOST), one of the National large scientific and engineering projects, successfully passed the National inspection and acceptance test in 2008. Ever since then the giant astronomical telescope has become the world´s most powerful survey instrument of its kind with nominal scan rate of 4000 celestial objects simultaneously per observation. This amazing output rate absolutely requires a means of efficient data acquisition, accessing and publication with enormous volume of local and remote data. The dataflow is running on networks of hierarchical levels within various kinds of components of the LAMOST control system. The paper briefly describes about LAMOST control system as a start, and further evolves into discussion on the data communication based on LabVIEW virtual instrument technology with an illustration of accessing a rain-and-dew sensor using a serial port. Also the paper presents the mechanism of DataSocket interface connected to the LabVIEW in LAMOST remote monitoring and control.