Development Process for Slit Mask Exchanger Mechanism Prototype (SMEM-P) of the Giant Magellan Telescope Multi-object Astronomical and cosmological Spectrograph (GMACS)

GMACS is one of the instruments for the Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT) which will provide wide field, multi-object, moderate resolution spectroscopy of faint targets. KHU (Kyung Hee University) is in charge of control software of GMACS. As a first step, the Slit Mask Exchange Mechanism Prototype (SMEM-P) will be used as a preliminary example to make development process between electronics and high level software. Recently, we have developed a sample program to communicate with low level devices via EtherCAT. It is expected to be a mockup design for software and control system of GMACS. In this poster, we show the development process and test operation results of control software for SMEM-P.