Best web technologies for a modern astronomical observatory

Astronomical observatories rely on very trusted, stable, but old-concept software.

Causes are: continuous upgrading, hardware/software patches, compatibility issues, pre-existing conditions coming from a pre-internet era.

We would like to implement "from scratch" the control system of the observatory, composed by

• A telescope accepting telnet commands;
• A cupola controlled via Arduino and Raspberry Pi;
• An AllSky Camera controllable with a Serial Port
• A Davis Pro 2 Weather Station controllable via Serial Port over Ethernet;
• A storage system of astronomical images.

All should be controllable with a web interface.

We are thinking at using

• bootstrap 4 for the web interfaces, from which observers will set parameters to the actors or will display results;
• d3.js for plots;
• webGL for displaying images;
• node.js to implement an event-based system to exchange messages between systems (and users);
• node.js again as web server;
• mongodb to store messages and as image+metadata database;
• python or ``node.js` to interface with most of the hardware.

Are these good choices? Should we use framework or systems that already implement some of these steps, such as angular or express? Any information and suggestion is welcome.

Our approach to the AllSky Camera can be found at https://github.com/vertighel/jallsky

via leonard vertighel