Sample Environment Development and Integration

The sample environment development lab (Lab 38) is primarily for developing and commissioning novel sample environments for the SAXS beamlines at Diamond, as well as working with existing sample environments for offline experiments and integrating User Sample environments with Diamond's data acquisition and control software (EPICS & GDA).

User institutions have developed a wide range of sample environments aimed for their specific research interests. These have generally been run independently of EPICS & GDA, leading to separate data streams and limited feedback between sample environments and beamline control. The development lab offers access to a complete beamline setup, from servers and acquisition hardware up to GDA outside of beamtime to allow users to integrate sample environments with our data acquisition stack with the aim of improving data synchronisation and opening up possibilities for active two-way feedback between the systems.

If you are interested in developing an integrated sample environment for experiments please contact Nick Terrill or Paul Wady. Access to Diamond to offline facilities to be arranged through laboratoryaccess@diamond.ac.uk. See also the offline lab access web pages.

Sample environment work must either be covered by the existing lab risk assessment, the existing sample environment risk assessment, or a new assessment must be produced, with the aid of the laboratory access team.

We primarily support three pathways for sample environment development, as laid out in the flow chart above, these are:

• Proposal for quick integration of an existing Sample Environment-Form
• EPICS & GDA integration of an existing sample environment (DAQ or sample environment control pathway)
• Complete development of a new sample environment (full project pathway and grant)

Resources are limited and so projects will be assigned based on how difficult the integration is, the size of the potential user community and the anticipated scientific impact; to maximise the latter, multi-institution collaborations are encouraged. It is anticipated for projects that follow the full project pathway that these environments will be made available to the user community, both for use on I22 and DL-SAXS beamline and in offline institutional laboratories, naturally, expectations will taper off depending on Diamond's involvement in the project.

Further details on hardware triggering specifications, EPICS interfacing, software APIs and GDA integration are available, however, as documentation for these are currently under development, at present your local contact will either provide details or connect you with an appropriate contact.

The left most path/ "quick integration project" covers some or all of the following I/O with the following limitations:

• User sample environment can expose a standard API to EPICS (Python is our preferred programming language, other languages may be possible) (strings, floating point variables, etc., updated at 10 Hz)
• Diamond DAQ reads or provides a triggering TTL signal to the sample environment (this is to synchronize with beamline instruments for example, detectors) (timing error: +10 ns)
• Diamond DAQ reads or provides +/-10 V Analogue signal I/O (1 MHz, +/- 10^-9 V)
• Diamond DAQ reads +/- 120 μA analogue signal (10 kHz)

The sample environment development laboratory, through the I22 beamline, has access to laboratory and staffing resources to put towards sample environment development of use to the general SAXS user community.

The setup available in the lab includes:

• A selection of breadboards for sample environment mounting
• Common tools, adapters and cables
• A PandABox (Quantum Detectors) providing:
  • TTL/LVDS/Fibre based triggering
  • DAC input and output (+/- 10 V)
  • Position-compare triggering functionalities
• RS232 communications via a NPort 6000 series terminal server (Moxa)
• Motion control via an IMS-II 8-axis Power Brick controller (Faraday Motion Controls) 
• A full Diamond beamline EPICS deployment for software/hardware interfacing
• Diamond's GDA data acquisition software
• Negotiable access to the Xeuss 3.0 (Xenocs) for non-synchrotron based x-ray testing