Progress made with integrating online area detectors with instrument
control on Tue Feb 20 11:13:32 MET 1996

       Name Rainer Wilcke 
       Institute ESRF - Grenoble 
       Telephone 76882061 
       Email wilcke@esrf.fr 
       Applicability X-rays 

General

 Keywords:
                                 Machine types
 Data Analysis, Hardware, C or C++ 
                                 SUN - SUNos Solaris 2.x 


Brief abstract

We are under increasing pressure to integrate CCD based area detectors into a tightly-coupled data collection
loop. Currently most of the CCD systems are only available on PC systems which for the most part run MSDOS
and Windows3.1. Considering that experiments are controlled by Unix workstations it is clear that this
separation of machines can cause problems of latency and of data transfer. This talk presents the efforts that we
have made in collaboration with the CCD system suppliers to resolve this by coupling the CCD hardware directly
to the controlling Unix workstation. Brief descriptions will be given of the hardware interfaces chosen and of the
software strategy adopted. Finally some results will be presented. 

In the second part of the talk, we will present an actual example of how an experiment using a CCD camera has
been carried out. The UNIX environment for the data acquisition and online display will be described. A Motif
based program has been developed to display 2D-image data, either online or read from files. We will talk about
our motivation to develop such a tool, its functionality and its other fields of usage. Finally, we will discuss how
this application could be used in other laboratories. 

Additional Useful Information

With G. Berruyer 

WWW address for more information is here

ftp address for remote access is here