Start the SINQ instrument control software SICS

Command control line client

The command line control client allows you after connecting to the instrument server to read out instrument parameters like motor positions, temperatures, magnetic field, etc. In order to move a motor or to start a data aquisition you need access privileges. The SICS server supports autorisation on different levels to protect the instrument against unauthorized hackers or accidental change of the instrument adjustment of less knowledgable user. Four different levels of access to the instrument are supported.

1. Spy: you may read out any instrument value, but may not change anything

2. User: you are privileged to perform a certain amount of operations necessary to run the instrument

3. Manager: you have the permission to do almost everything

4. Internal: is not accessible to the outside world and is used to circumvent protection for internal uses

SANS status display

The SANS status display is an application for displaying the status of a SANS measurement at SINQ. The application can be stated by the command sansstatus &. First a connection to the SICS server has to be established. You can choose between two data display areas. The first form shows a large colour mapped image of the detector. The second form shows a couple of selected instrument parameters. Switching between the two displays is achieved through the buttons [Detector] and [Parameter] of the tool bar.

The displayed data window can be updated either manually or automatic. By default manual update is enabled. Manual update happens when hitting the red button at the bottom. Automatic update can be enabled by checking the CheckBox labelled [Automatic Update] in the [Update] menu. The update intervall can be configured with a dialog which shows up when the [Set Update Intervall] menu selection is clicked. Automatic updates impose a high network load. Use with care and only when necessary. For this reason, automatic updates are disabled in the applet version of this program. An updates take approximatly 5 seconds. Consequently update intervalls shorter than that are nonsense. Speeding this up an [Turbo Update] button has been introduced. In this modus the client doesn't communicate with the SICS server to recieve the detector information, but it communicates directly with the histograming memory. This speeds the update frequency up to a few frames per second. [Turbo Update] will continuously poll the histogram memory for new histogram data. This is only limited by CPU, network and histogram memory performance. Thus [Turbo Update] tends to overload your system. It should only be used while adjusting the beamstop, otherwise its use is a waste of system resources which will eventually slow down your data reduction chores. Do NOT forget to switch this off when you are done. The system will automatically switch to [Auto Update] mode after 20 minutes.

The detector display has a lot of options. Below the colour picture there is a line which displays the current detector coordinate and the data value at the current mouse position. By choosing the [Open Old File] item in the [File] menu you can load an old data set, i.e. you can use the SANS status display as a viewer for old SANS data files. A double clicking on the colour display brings up a dialog which allows to configure the colour mapping of the detector display. By holding down the mouse button and dragging the mouse a rectangular area of the detector display can be selected. When releasing the mouse button, the selected region is summed and displayed as a X-Y graph in a separate window. In the title of this plot the total counts in the selected rectangular area on the detector is printed. Dragging the mouse downwards in this new window allows to zoom in into details of the histogram. Dragging the mouse upwards zooms out again. At the bottom of the window is a dismiss button which removes the histogram window. The histogram in the histogram window will NOT be automatically updated when new data arrives.

Variable watcher varwatch

This little SICS client allows to plot the value of a variable in a SICS server against time. This will probably be mostly used for watching the temperature stability of a temperature controller. But it is not restricted to temperature variables, all numeric SICS variables can be monitored that way.

The configuration of the variable watcher involves two steps:

1. Select your favourite SICS server from the choices in the [Connect] menu. [Custom] allows to specify a SICS server directly by host name and port number.

2. Configure the variable to watch using the [Configure] item in the [Plot] menu. Three parameters are relevant:

   1. The watch frequency, which is the time in minutes between plot updates.

   2. The backlog, which is the number of values which will be plotted.

   3. The SICS variable to watch. This text must be a valid SICS command which returns a reply in the form blabla = <number> .

Further user interface elements are two buttons below the plot. These allow to start and stop the recording of the variables value. The yellow text field besides these buttons displays the current operation of the variable watcher which can be one of Inactive or Recording. Below is a line showing the current status of the SICS server. Please note, that the most recent value is always at the right hand side of the plot.

The plot can be zoomed into by dragging downwards with the left mouse button. Zooming out is achieved by dragging outwards with the mouse or with the [Reset] or [Rescale Y] options in the [Plot] menu. The plot can be printed using the [Print] option in the [Plot] menu. Next to plotting a variable in a SICS server against time the variable watcher can be used to display a XYTable which is a class maintaining a list of x-y values. If a XYTable object is available in the system under the name <xydata> the command <xydata> uuget has to be given to the varwatch SICS client in order to make it display the x-y list. More information about handling a XYTable can be found in the Section called XY table in the Chapter called Instrument control commands.