BNC webinar on "Principles and practice of instrument control in neutron facilities - the NICOS system"               by                           Jens Krüger (Heinz Maier-Leibnitz Zentrum Garching)               on                  30 January, 2025     14:00 - 14:45 + discussion   Abstract   Meeting link

Abstract: 

This presentation will give an overview of NICOS as a software environment to control neutron scattering instruments. The control of instruments working with neutrons as probes is challenging, so that a system to fulfill this task must meet a number of requirements. For example, it must work for a variety of unique instruments and it must reconcile different, sometimes contradictory requirements. These include a high level of user acceptance and user-friendliness, interactive operation and the ability to perform measurements that require a long runtime (typically overnight) can be run smoothly using scripts.

The aim here is to make effective use of the limited neutron intensity and available beam time at the neutron scattering centers. The NICOS system, developed by scientists for scientists, - due to its high modularity - meets these requirements. It has been successfully used at the MLZ (Garching, D) and PSI (Villigen, CH) and will be used at the ESS (Lund, S). Therefore it may also be of interest to the BNC colleagues, upon upgrading existing control systems or controlling new or relocated instruments.