Integrating microprobe laboratory automation with high speed data acquisition and analysis

We are developing a laboratory and beam line control system. The MpControl system utilises all the flexibility and power of a computer network. Target stages, power supplies, Faraday cups, beam monitors, event counters, etc. can all be controlled by any of a number of computers in the laboratory. Software on each of these computers allows control, monitoring and display of the state of the beam line, accelerator and target manipulation stage. The entire system may be simultaneously controlled from any computer terminal on the network. The system has the potential to allow a user to manipulate the target stage from the beam control room, or to adjust accelerator parameters from the target chamber at the end of the beam line. The system has been designed to be easily transportable across computer platforms, currently with support for UNIX, X-Windows and MS-DOS. We believe this is a critical factor in a world of rapidly advancing computer and instrumentation hardware systems. The system has been designed to integrate with the MpSys data acquisition system.