Configurable Experiment Control System

Configurable Experiment Control System

(Third Party Funds Group – Sub project)

Overall project: FAIRmat – FAIR Data Infrastructure for Condensed-Matter Physics and the Chemical Physics of Solids
Project leader: ,
Project members: ,
Start date: October 1, 2021
End date: September 30, 2026
Acronym: FAIRmat (NFDI) D5
Funding source: Nationale Forschungsdateninfrastruktur (NFDI)
URL: https://www.fair-di.eu/fairmat/areas-fairmat/area-d-fairmat

Abstract

The condensed-matter community not only uses commercial standalone measurement systems, but often individual ad-hoc experimental setups for many small experiments, in which a set of measurement and process control devices are combined in order to solve a highly specific measurement task. On the good side, this heterogeneous experimental situation is ultra-flexible and productive; however, its downside is, by experience, a heterogeneous data structure and highly redundant development of corresponding software pieces.

Within this project we are developing a configurable experiment control system (NOMAD-CAMELS). It targets (i) simplifying the implementation of measurement and process-control protocols, thereby (ii) generating standardized output for individual measurement and process control setups. As a consequence of the generalized concept, (iii) metadata can be generated automatically, which precisely documents the experimental protocol including all device settings. These metadata will be mutually linked with sample history in electronic lab notebooks (ELNs). Furthermore, (iv) NOMAD-CAMELS will include a user-friendly graphical user interface (GUI), a setup wizard as well as tutorials and documentation allowing researchers and students an immediate start of experiments. Thus, this task intends to implement FAIRmat standards very early in the research data life cycle, starting from the data management plan, to raw-data recording along with the description of data acquisition.

Publications