Send an arbitrary command string to a miscellaneous external device.

Arguments:

DeviceName device

The name of the external device that the command should be sent to. If this device isn't currently connected to the control program, then the command will be discarded.

ReceiverCmd command

The command string to be sent to the external device.

Example:

The following example sends the receiver called "kuband" a command string that tells it to turn on the antenna noise source and turn off the reference noise-source.

 tell kuband, "ant_noise=on, ref_noise=off"

Context:

Since there is no way to predict what commands will be needed by future receivers and instruments, this command is provided as a way to send arbitrary commands to external devices as text strings.

The interpretation of the command strings is up to the external device controller, and the strings are not checked by the telescope control program. At this point in time, there is no way to interpolate the values of script variables into these command strings. This may be added later.

Beware that if a device with the specified name is not connected at the time that this command is run, the command string will simply be discarded.

When a schedule that contains tell commands is queued, there is no way for the control program to know which devices will be connected when the tell command is run. It also doesn't know what devices potentially exist. So device names are not checked when the schedule is queued.