Blu-ice and the distributed control system: Software for data acquisition and instrument control at macromolecular crystallography beamlines

Academic Article
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publication date

  • November 2002

abstract

  • The Blu-Ice and Distributed Control System (DCS) software packages were developed to provide unified control over the disparate hardware resources available at a macromolecular crystallography beamline. Blu-Ice is a user interface that provides scientific experimenters and beamline support staff with intuitive graphical tools for collecting diffraction data and configuring beamlines for experiments. Blu-Ice communicates with the hardware at a beamline via DCS, an instrument-control and data-acquisition package designed to integrate hardware resources in a highly heterogeneous networked computing environment. Together, Blu-Ice and DCS provide a flexible platform for increasing the ease of use, the level of automation and the remote accessibility of beamlines. Blu-Ice and DCS are currently installed on four Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory crystallographic beamlines and are being implemented at sister light sources.