Speaker
Description
Typically in the past, data collection software developed by individuals with non-software-focused roles often placed low priority on the User Interface (UI), considering it time-consuming and prone to software bugs. However, for software developers primarily tasked with delivering reliable software, the aim is to create a robust platform enabling users of all levels to efficiently collect data, automate repetitive and error-prone tasks, and offer user-friendly features to enhance efficiency at the beamline. A comprehensive user interface is fundamental to achieving these objectives.
Not wanting to reinvent the wheel the user interface incorporates ideas inspired from successful well known existing commercial and open source software, Adobe Photoshop and the open source 3D animation software project, Blender. These two software applications were used as inspiration because of their ability to provide a user interface that was able to organize complex data that would scale with time into panels and areas of the screen that facilitated work flow as well as user learning. Not only do these two particular applications do a great job at organizing complex data they also allow for that complex data to scale with future feature enhancements. Along with user efficiency the goal was also standardization of the data file format that produces NEXUS[1] files that conform to the NXstxm[2] NEXUS application definition. pyStxm connects to the underlying motors and other devices via EPICS[3] applications.
The application is written in Python using Qt as the application framework. Device driver support is through EPICS drivers and IOC applications. The CLS spectro microscopy beamline (10ID1) contains 2 STXM end stations in series that get their names from the vacuum environments they operate in, Ambient STXM (ASTXM) for vacuum pressure regions 10-5 and the UHV or Cryo STXM (CSTXM) for vacuum down to 10-8. The CSTXM commissioned in 2019 uses version 2.5 of pyStxm which is dependent on EPICS SSCAN records to perform the function of the scanning engine, the latest version (3) uses the BlueSky [4] data collection framework for the same function. Version 3 of the software was ported to BlueSky as part of an upgrade project for the ASTXM. The bulk of the upgrade for the software was carried out on a testbench of duplicate hardware and using a laser as the source so as to not interfere with existing beamline operations which for the most part achieved the desired goal. Due to numerous hardware failures, commissioning of the software and end station pushed from late 2023 into 2024 which unfortunately contained a lengthy 6-month outage to replace the LINAC which was originally installed in the 1960’s. However, the majority of commissioning work was completed which included the addition of a ptychographic capability for the end station. The largest barrier to completion of commissioning at time of writing is a significant vibration issue preventing image resolutions below 150 nm.
References:
[1] Mark Könnecke, E. et al., (2015). The NeXus data format. Journal of Applied Crystallography. Volume 48, Part 1 (301-305)
[2] Benjamin Watts and Jörg Raabe., (2016), A NeXus/HDF5 based file format for STXM, AIP Conference Proceedings 1696, 020042, https://doi.org/10.1063/1.4937536 Published Online
[3] Dalesio, E. et al.,(1991). EPICS architecture (Conference: International conference on accelerator and large experimental physics control systems, Tsukuba (Japan), 11-15 Nov 1991)
[4] Daniel Allan, E. et al., (2019). Bluesky's Ahead: A Multi-Facility Collaboration for an a la Carte Software Project for Data Acquisition and Management. Synchrotron Radiation News, Volume 32, Issue 3.
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