The segment alignment maintenance system software for the Southern African Large Telescope, utilises inductive edge sensor technology and SVD mathematics and requires the data acquisition and digital processing of multiple parameters from 480 sensors and their linearisation into real world data.

Responsible for software architecture design, hardware driver definition, integration of the matrix transform, development of visualisation and test tools for the graphical user interface, and integration into the existing telescope alignment system.

I also worked onsite at Fogale Nanotech with the design engineer defining the hardware communication protocol and sensor interface, making the decision to use UDP data streaming instead of a TCP request mechanism, which has proved extremely robust.

The successful implementation of this project substantially increased scientific throughput by extending the alignment period from twice nightly to weekly, surpassing the specification of maintaining Global Radius of Curvature through a temperature slope of <2℃/hour over a temperature range of 15℃ for a minimum of 5 consecutive days.