HEART: REVOLT RTC using Herzberg Extensible Adaptive Real-time Toolkit (HEART)

REVOLT is an experimental testbed that will be used to test novel AO components and AO techniques on sky at the 1.2m telescope of the Dominion Astrophysical Observatory. In its initial configuration that will be tested on-sky in spring 2022, REVOLT will have one deformable mirror, an ALPAO DM 277 and a Shack-Hartmann WFS based on a newly developed 512x512 pixel Near-Infrared Avalanche Photodiode array (Saphira). This testbed will be controlled at frame rates of up to 1 kHz by a Real-Time Controller (RTC) based on HEART(1). HEART has gone through extensive testing and benchmarking, but this is the first time it will be tested on-sky. This paper will discuss customization of HEART required by REVOLT for the specified hardware, the issues found and lessons learned, the performance achieved during operations and the upgrades performed on HEART as a result.