OPTICAM Triple-Channel Astronomical Image Acquisition Control Software and External Triggering Synchronization System

We present the development of software to control the multichannel image acquisition process and the design of an external timing module (ETM) for the OPTICAM system (Castro et al., 2019). The ETM is used to generate high-speed synchronized pulses for OPTICAM’s three different sCMOS cameras and is based on an ESP32-S2 micro-controller. The graphical user interface (GUI) of this instrument is also described, which allows users to enter the configuration parameters of the observations and execute actions such as starting and stopping image acquisition sequences or initializing cameras. 3 mini PCs are in charge of reading each one of the cameras, respectively. The software and hardware tools presented here have been successfully implemented at the Observatorio Astronómico Nacional (OAN-SPM), Mexico. By analyzing the recorded image sequences, it is possible to perform high-precision multi-channel photometric measurements of astrophysical objects that exhibit high temporal variability, revealing information about periodicities, inter-band delays, and quasi-periodic oscillations.