Design and implementation of an instrument control platform for future beamline experiments at SPring-8

BL-774 is a control, data acquisition, and online analysis platform for addressing the requirements in future beamline experiments at SPring-8-II. To date, we have achieved implementations related to “robustness and flexibility” and “configuration management”. These implementations were made possible by the two-phase development workflow. The two-phase development is characterized by a dedicated rapid application development environment that beamline scientists can use rapidly and easily in real beamline environments, and web-based graphical user interfaces that BL-774 software developers have incorporated the achievements of the beamline scientists as part of the official release of the beamline control software. BL-774 has been introduced in two beamlines to date, and we plan to implement it in more beamlines while adding more features. We plan to integrate BL-774 seamlessly with other systems that are currently under development in the facility, such as two-dimensional detector systems and SPring-8 data centers. By introducing BL-774 in conjunction with other infrastructure in the facility, more advanced experimental operations, such as feedback operations based on online data analysis or remote operations from outside the beamlines, are to be expected. This paper presents the design and implementation of BL-774 and its introduction into a beamline at SPring-8.