Code-itch » nxclient http://www.code-itch.com/blog A non-coders attempts at writing useful code Sat, 20 Mar 2010 20:13:04 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0.1 The Berkeley synchrotron Brandeis Campus: Remote synchrotron data collection courtesy the tubes http://www.code-itch.com/blog/2009/02/the-berkeley-synchrotron-brandeis-campus/ http://www.code-itch.com/blog/2009/02/the-berkeley-synchrotron-brandeis-campus/#comments Wed, 11 Feb 2009 16:15:04 +0000 harijay http://www.code-itch.com/blog/?p=93 I dont know why I feel so ecstatic at the thought of running an experiment remotely . Maybe its all the NASA TV I watched as a Graduate student or the several telemicroscopy talks I attended next door at the NCMI. This post is a little about the wonders of robotics and the great things engineers do that makes it possible for scientists to do better fundamental research and mostly about little pieces that fit together to enable good science.

Last week we test ran a remote data collection at the Berkeley synchrotron. Normally we would have flown all the way to Berkeley to then manually mount our crystals on the diffraction experiement setup and then spent 24 to 48 hours collecting diffraction data. This time however we shipped our dewar to the synchrotron , had the extremeley helpful beamline scientsists load our crystals which were stored in specially designed pucks onto the crystal mounting robot, after which we controlled the entire experiement remotely sitting in the comfort of our lab at Brandeis or even at home over the weekend.

The amazing part about the experience was the real-time nature of the control . In the video you will see us align a crystal by clicking a window on an nxclient session . The robot responds almost immediately to our click event. The video also shows the robot moving the dewar open and mounting crystals. Its quite something when you realize that the video is a screen capture of our nxclient session. So the video of the crystal moving during centering and the robot motions is all pushed through in near real time. 

Now I am sure any network guru or video delivery specialist is saying , this technology has existed for a while, there is nothing magical about this. But somehow I think its nice to recognize technology such as this for its enabling power.  Just as I am amazed when I conduct a three way video conference with my family in three separate countries over ichat , I am even more amazed that I can seemlessly control an experiment all the way across the country from the comfort of my home .

( The ccp4 wiki has a list of synchrotrons offering remote data collection services )

]]> http://www.code-itch.com/blog/2009/02/the-berkeley-synchrotron-brandeis-campus/feed/ 3