The Materials Microcharacterization Collaboratory

Participants

Objective

Approach

Accomplishments

Plans

Tools Available

Publications

Demonstrations

Partners

Instrument Services

IS provides a scalable means of instrument control through an Instrument Factory, Instrument, and an abstract Action class. Each control parameter (such as focus, beam shift, etc.) is presented as a "property'". The Instrument Factory creates a set of properties for a specific Instrument. These properties and their corresponding attributes can either be queried or manipulated through the Action class. The Action class is polymorphic for those taking place between the local area network (LANAction) and the wide area network (WANAction). There is a slight difference in implementation detail for these sub-classes. The action class has two methods that correspond to simple "set" and "get" operations on a specific property.

Exchange Services

Exchange services provides a set of objects for information exchange between various types of objects

1. The directory object provides a listing of existing on-line instruments along with their capabilities, functionalities, and locations for making queries and constructing appropriate proxies. This object is essentially a configuration file that is accessible through a URL.
2. The blob manager (BlobMgr) object provides an efficient means of transferring bulk data between various objects. An instrument may have multiple detectors that may include TV cameras and/or digital CCD cameras, etc. These detectors generate blobs of data that need to be transported, processed, and archived. The Blob Manager provides a mechanism for this task. At the moment, it supports a wrapper for several types of analog and digital camera input. Additionally, it support the necessary data compression protocol per client's request.
3. The session manager (SessionMgr) object provides a listing of active users and the interlocking mechanism to pass instrument control between different clients. Both Instrument and Blob objects are managed objects, which is supported by the Session Manager.
4. The GUI object aims to provide needed functionality for a particular type of experiment. A fairly detailed abstraction exists for in-situ and high-resolution microscopy. This panel also provides the means to present simulation results as well as historical data for comparison and analysis.

The Shared Space manager provides a mechanism to share textual and graphical annotations among multiple collaborators.

Computational Services

These services were developed under an LDRD program at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. They are being integrated into the baseline system, since new algorithms and networked high performance computing are viewed as unique assets within the National Laboratories, and by leveraging computational and experimental facilities, new functionalities can be realized. Examples include in-situ electron microscopy and recovery of 3D shape through holographic microscopy. The former focuses on the behavior of an inclusion (time-dependent morphological changes) as a function of external stimulation, e.g., changes in temperature and pressure.

More information can be found in our Web site at http://www-itg.lbl.gov/MMC with design, documentation, and source code at http//www-itg.lbl.gov/MMC/DesignDoc/software.html

Other tools

We have developed Java applets to control video switches and a Deben Research Sprite control, a common "third party" specimen stage automation system.

We have operational experience with a variety of commercial streaming video tools that might be useful to other projects.  We originally deployed GTS Graham Technology Solutions, Inc. tools.  The quality is high but so was the cost.  However, they have recently introduced a line of low cost products and also more support for NT systems.  WebCast is much less expensive than GTS and is based on a client-server model.  Free clients send video the the server which makes the video available on web.  Unfortunately, video quality is marginal due to an artificial limit placed on network bandwidth useage.  Emulive is similar to WebCast but has a different pricing model and allows higher quality video.  Emulive also supports multicast through a freeware player.

A software toolkit for processing image data has been written in Java.