Advanced Photon Source

» an Office of Science User Facility

 

ESRF Instrument Control Overview

(Speaker J.Klora)

Beam Line Instrument Software Support: G. Berruyer, A. Beteva, M.C. Dominguez, F.Epaud, D. Fernandez, A. Goetz, T. Guenzel, J. Klora, M.C. Lagier, G. Pepellin, S. Peters, V. Rey, F. Sever, D. Spruce

Task

• Instrument Support for 30 BL -> choice of tools, scripts, installation

Overview

• Modular setup
• How could you profit from our developments

SPEC

• Commercial program from Certified Scientific Software.
• Instrument control package to move motors, use all kind of detectors (counters, MCA, CCD,)
• Routines to scan these devices, plot, save the data, work with diffractometers in reciprocal space (n-circle, kappa, z-axis,) etc.
• Command Line Interface

• Powerful macro language to automate data taking, powerful data handling routines to analyze data on line.

SPEC at the ESRF

• The ESRF has a site license (with the source code) for SPEC.

SPEC at the ESRF - Some numbers
Number of installations (beam lines and labs)	all beam lines and labs
Number of motors controlled at the ESRF	~3000
Number of counter channels	~1000
Number of different devices	~100

Can it be shared?

• No- Commercial program. But the developments done for the ESRF will benefit to other customers.
• Programs and Macros developed at the ESRF can be of course shared. Information in the talk ofGerry Swislowand underhttp://www.certif.com

ESRF SPEC macro development

 

Many macro sets (The "official" ESRF macros written by our group for SPEC are now more than 40000 lines of macro code)

General Hardware support

• MCA macros (calibration, data taking, saving, ROIs,)
• CCD macros (calibration, data taking, saving, ROIs,)

General Utilities

• Plotting to screen and printer
• Macro handling, setup,

Experimental procedures

• Continuous scans, extended range scans, time scans,
• PHI slicing, EDS, refl. search, peak centring

Pseudo motors

• Slits, 3 leg tables, stacked
• See tutorial:http://www.esrf.fr/computing/bliss/tutor/pseudomotor.html

Can it be shared?

• YES- but only by people using SPEC. Documented and available under http://www.esrf.fr/computing/expg/subgroups/icntl/spec/local/help.html
• A big problem is that there are dependencies between the different macro files.
• Should we maintain a pool of macros somewhere?

Low Level Software

Device Server (Taco)

• Object Oriented Toolkit for distributed Client Server Systems
• Runs on HP-UX, Solaris, Linux, Windows 95/NT, OS9, VxWorks
• Talk to VME card in OS9 crate.

   

  

• Use of PC hardware and windows driver and library.
• Clean interface (work as a team).
• Not every device needs a dedicated server. It is sufficient to have a server for the access port (serial line, gpib, VME memory)
• The device server concept can also be used to transfer some intelligence from the Unix side (SPEC) to the device server on the front-end.

   

  

Can it be shared?

• YES- Fully documented and available for the general libraries to use the device server concept.
• Simple to install (home PC).
• See: Andy Goetz andhttp://www.esrf.fr/computing/cs/taco/taco.html
• Currently most device servers run under OS9. Some servers written at the ESRF also run under Unix. Seehttp://www.esrf.fr/computing/cs/device_servers/Keywords.html
• While the general architecture is easy to share it is much more uncertain for the individual device servers (some run only on ESRF standard hardware).

Future

• Use Corba (and DCOM?)

On-line Analysis

• SPEC can use external programs on-line.

 

• We have interfaced programs for auto indexing, OM refinement, peak searching and on-line spatial distortion corrections
• synchronous now -> asynchr.
• Data exchange as arguments to data_pipe or by usage of shared memory.

Spatial correction distortion

• Image intensifiers have extreme spatial distortion (up to 100 pixel on 1024x1024 ccd).
• Background, Floodfield and Spatial distortion correction on-line very fast.

   

  

   

Algorithm

• Calculate Look-up table from pixel distribution.

   

  

• Writes program to do the whole distortion correction without loops

   

  

• Compresses and optimizes this program (5 million instructions) approx. 5 MB RAM space required.

Machine Type	Time [s] Spatial Corr. (int)	T[s] + flood field + back ground (float)
HP9000/755 /B	1.0	1.5
HP9000/871 D370	0.7
Ultra Sparc-1 143 MHz	0.8	1.2
PC 200 MHz Pentium Pro (Linux)	0.4	1.0
PC 266 MHz Pentium II (Linux)	0.35	(1.9)

Can it be shared?

• YESfor Fit2D - Talk to its AuthorA. Hammersleyorhttp://www.esrf.fr/computing/expg/subgroups/data_analysis/FIT2D
• YES SOONfor On-line correction - only available on demand for the moment. No documentation yet other than from the command line.
• On-line correction can work via files or shared memory. The only requirement for the shared memory is a standard header.

On-line Displays

 

• Camera Display - DIS
• Multi Channel Analyzer Display - McaTCL
• Specplot - Scan display
• Signal Monitoring

Shared memory

• Very simple header, easy to create.
• The only synchronization is through the update counter.
• Data taking program never has to wait but data is not guaranteed.
• Display program can offer a choice of possible data to display with help of a magic number.

MCA Display - McaTCL

 

y

• Display spectra
• Do peak search and calibration.
• Input from shared memory or files.

Can it be shared?

• Needs TCL/TK with TIX and BLT toolkit to compile.
• Shared memory needs standard header if the program should be used on-line with other programs than SPEC.
• We use our own ASCII file format (same as SPEC).
• Seehttp://www.esrf.fr/computing/expg/subgroups/tcltk/mca/McaUI.html
   

On-line Display for CCD cameras DIS

• Fast (4 images 1024*1024 per second)
• Many features (Cuts, Zoom, Time series, 3D Plots,)

Can it be shared?

• YES- Documentation and download via WWW soon
• Needs Motif,XRT Widgets(Hp, Sun, Linux). Binary version can be used without XRT License.
• People who do not want to use SPEC need to exchange data on-line with shared memory with a standard header.
• Currently only very few file formats supported (ESRF, Mar, binary)

Specplot

• Displays scan data
• Peak search, fit data
• Extract data
• Reads standard SPEC files.
• On-line shared memory part not finished yet.

Can be shared?

• Needs TCL/TK, BLT, TIX
• No on-line documentation, available only on demand. Information about the underlying SPEC reading library athttp://www.esrf.fr/computing/expg/subgroups/icntl/spec/specfile/specfile.html

Signal Monitoring

• Signals are values together withsome information about them, which can come from different sources.
• Signal sources are files, shared memory (our ESRF historical database, the data collector or device servers)

Can it be shared?

• Not yet available - runs on the ESRF control system.

Graphical user interface on top of SPEC

 

SPEC <-> Interface communication

 

Communication Step	Example in TCL
The Interface registers itself	send Builder SB_CONNECT
The Interface tells the Builder which callbacks it can treat	send Builder SB_REGCMD status
The Interface goes into its mainloop.

General SPEC GUI

• Very flexible
• Built in standard commands (move motors, count, group elements, start/ stop SPEC, display positions)
• Setup can be saved to disk.
• Can run multiple sessions of SPEC
• User defined panels as extra windows or "stuck" to the main window.
• Simple Interfaces can be written in hours (days)

Examples

Can it be shared?

• YESif you use Spec. For documentation see:http://www.esrf.fr/computing/expg/subgroups/icntl/gui/specgui/manual_irefTOC.html .Currently only available on demand.
• TheBuildercan be used on its own to write TCL/TK or C graphical user interfaces to SPEC.
• Device server interface for the Builder in the future.

Overview Graph

Discussion/Future

• Use Linux on the Front-end computer (VME crate).
• Why is it so hard to share programs in Instrument Control / Data Acquisition? (Missing documentation, Know-how, Ego)
• Pool of software modules, Data format,