ITEE Innovation Expo 2008 : Project Details

Instrument interfaces for remotely accessible experiments (iLab)

This project aims to create remote interfaces to two instruments used by the School of Molecular and Microbial Sciences (SMMS). These are a UV-visual Spectrophotometer, and a Gas Chromatographer/Mass Spectrometer (GCMS). The interfaces will be published on the internet, allowing the devices to be controlled from anywhere in the world, 24 hours per day. Hopefully students and staff will have greater and more flexible access to these high-demand instruments.

The remote interfaces were developed within the framework of the iLab project, which provides a unified interface and structure for remote laboratories. The iLab Architecture consists of a set of flexible, generic Web Services, which take care of tasks common to all laboratories. Constructing an iLab is then usually just a matter of creating a Lab Server (control software specific to the instrument), and a Lab Client (a user interface, also lab specific).

The UV-visual Spectrophotometer iLab required the creation of control software to interface between the iLab Lab Server and the instrument hardware. This was based on proprietary software provided by the device manufacturer. The user then interacts with the iLab by submitting a specification for an Experiment scan in a web form, and downloading the results as a text file.

The GCMS iLab requires that users interact in real-time with several proprietary software products which control the instrument. These products must run on a Lab Server connected directly to the instrument. To accomplish this, a remote desktop connection is created from the client PC to the Lab Server using the FOSS project UltraVNC. Users then control the instrument just as they would were they physically in the laboratory.