NHMRC Seminar Slides

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Australian Synchrotron
PerspectivesGrid enabling the facility Richard
Farnsworth, nod to Robert Hobbs
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20km southeast of the centre of Melbourne.
Adjacent to Monash University.
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Commencing operation in 2007 Initial suite of
nine beamlines with space for a least 30 in the
long term
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Artists impression of the Australian
Synchrotronfour years ago
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1 June 2006
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Inside
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Panorama
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Storage Ring Magnets
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Booster to Storage Ring Transfer Line
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Control Room
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X-Ray Diagnostic Beamline
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How does it work?
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How does it work?
Then they pass into the booster ring where they
are accelerated to 99.9999 of the speed of light
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How does it work?
And are finally transferred into the storage ring
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How does it work?
The beams of light travel out tangentially to the
ring, down individual beamlines
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How does it work?

• To constrain the electrons in the circular orbit,
  they are passed through a series of bending
  magnets
• Each time the electrons are deflected they
  generate an intense beam of light

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Status at a glance

• Injection System 3mA beam at 3GeV.
• Ongoing optimisation.
• Storage Ring Mechanically and electrically
  complete.
• Services complete.
• Instrumentation Controls going.
• Front Ends 9 front ends installed for initial
  beamlines.
• Diagnostic Beamlines Optical and X-Ray
  Diagnostic Beamlines installed.
• Personnel Safety System Final checks completed.
• Experimental Beamlines Five beamlines currently
  being procured and constructed.
• Four beamlines in design phase.
• Facility Operator Tendering in progress.

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First turn!
First turn
08.06.2006 2351 First Turn in Storage
Ring!!! after tweaking horizontal corrector in
the middle of sector 5 the beam came around for
first turn!
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Four turns
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Synchrotron accelerator Standards

• EPICS
• EPICS 3.14.6
• Channel Archiver 2.1.8
• Alarm Handler 1.2.16 (ten archive engines)
• Hardware
• Variety of dual-screen x86-based computers
  running Windows XP and RedHat Enterprise Linux
• PSS Console using Pilx
• Maintenance Console (for monitoring network,
  deploying software, variety of other maintenance
  applications)
• Scheideder PLCs via modbus (and some others-
  Toshiba, Yokogawa, Rockwell, Siemens)
• Software
• Delphi 2005 for Custom Operator Interface EDM
• MATLAB applications developed by evil physicists
• Bitscope and tektroics Remote Oscilloscope
  monitoring software
• OPC link to building and plant monitoring

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Synchrotron Beamline Standards

• Extend the success of the machine
• EPICS
• Developing under 3.14.7 and 3.14.8.2
• Extensive use of synApps
• Mainly Linux (CentOS, Fedora) with Windows as
  required
• Hardware
• Delta Tau and Galil motion control
• Wide range of VME hardware
• All VME hardware accessed across PCI/VME bridge
  using existing drivers
• Schneider PLCs for EPS and PSS
• User interfaces
• BluIce for Protein Crystallography
• GumTree for Powder Diffraction and SAXS/WAXS
• GSECARS developments for XAS
• MEDM for commissioning/early operation

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User requirements for Beamlines
? Important ? Desirable
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First five Beamlines
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Australian Synchrotron Infrastructure

• From a data point of view, each Beamline will
  connect to a single high speed fibre link into
  VERN/AARNET/WHATEVER.
• This will consist of
• - Infrastructure fibre cable (72 pairs, 10
  Gigabit/Sec ), only one is live until Beamlines
  come online, cos we aint making data yet.
• - High speed Routers at the Synchrotron able to
  distribute to the Beamlines independently
• - Monash is the Point of presence for VERNET,
  The Synchrotron is a non redundant take off point
  (at the moment).
• - Machine operations are light from a data
  perspective (duty engineer/Operator remote
  diagnosis etc) and are already available

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Data Storage for Beamlines

• Local data storage, protocols not yet defined
  saving this for late as possible, but likely to
  be based around existing self describing datasets
  (NEXUS is one, IDL is another, may use XML type
  standards)
• Raid type Data arrays and front end processing
  before transmission or archival.
• Likely to be in the 3-50 TB (terabyte range)
• Will use Standards comparable to other facilities
  (Open source)

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Telepresence

• To enable remote members of the users
  experimental team to participate in and review
  the progress of an experiment at a beamline
• in particular to advise on data interpretation
  or to help in trouble-shooting
• To enable remote members of the users
  experimental team to participate in and review
  the progress of an experiment at a beamline

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Telepresence

• Requirements
• 1. Real time audio and video links between the
  team at the beamline and a remote group, or
  possibly groups
• for the audio link a normal phone line with
  portable headsets would probably be sufficient
• in addition a good quality conference phone is
  desirable, (but note that the environment around
  the beamlines is fairly noisy)
  

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Telepresence

• Requirements
• 2. Ability to view the experimental set up
  through remotely controlled cameras
• two to three cameras will probably be required,
  with control over tilt, pan and zoom
• ideally operating at 10 to 15 frames per second

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Telepresence

• Requirements
• 3. Ability to see the control and output
  screens at the beamline
• the control screen would show operational items
  such as the status of the ring, the photon
  shutter, monochromator setting, the sample
  position
• the output screens would show the information
  collected by the detectors, after some
  pre-processing to generate images or spectral
  data

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Telepresence

• Requirements
• 4. Transmission of the raw data to the remote
  site for special post processing initially data
  rates are expected to be about 20 Mb/sec, however
  with the new developments of detectors that are
  currently proposed this will increase
  substantially.
• security of the data is important
• EPICS will primarily be used for data
  acquisition, and NEXUS for data formatting, DICOM
  for medical imaging (these are still under
  discussion)

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The PX interface
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Architecture diagrams for Blu-Ice (SSRL)
SSRL
GMCA
BluIce
Interface
DCSS
Server
DHS
DHS
DHS
Driver
Robot
CCD
EPICS
Driver
Driver
Driver
IO
Motor
Device
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The Distributed Control System - PX
DHS (Distributed Hardware Server) Converts DCSS
messages into the language of a third party
hardware controller.
DCSS (Distributed Control System Server) Routes
messages between multiple GUI Clients and
various hardware components.
BLU-ICE (Beam Line Universal Integrated
Configuration Environment) Hides the complexity
of the beam line from the user
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Remote operation

• Some beamlines will be equipped with robotic
  systems to load and centre the samples
• These robots will be remotely controllable
• The main requirements will be
• An intelligent high-level user interface to
  simplify the control of operations
• Safety systems to ensure unlicensed operators
  cannot access the system

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Remote access - robotic crystal mounting
4-Axisrobot
Goniometer
Gripper arms
Collimator
Cryo-stream
SampleCamera
DispensingDewar
Hutchtable
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Protocols and interconnections

• Nothing exotic or unique if possible, although
  some of the higher speed data collection will
  required special techniques.
• For remote control, will use both custom
  applications and commercially supplied
  techniques. E.g. Active X, HTML, and X type
  displays.
• Will use standard firewall technologies for
  security.

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Background

• BluIce selected as preferred interface
• EPICS control system for photon delivery system
• Two distinct implementations
• SSRL We chose this
• GMCA

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System architecture

• SSRL
• Interface BluIce
• Server DCSS
• Drivers DHSs for devices, including EPICS
• Devices EPICS and other devices

• GMCA
• Interface BluIce
• Custom application to translate to Channel Access
• Server EPICS
• Drivers EPICS
• Devices Various