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RDPW - Radicon Device Programming WorkbenchThis application software for personal computers is aimed to program and automate the operation of various hardware components of X-ray diffractometer, as detectors, motors, relays and sensors. It may be successfully applied to other types of laboratory equipment as well. If you are interested, e-mail to Radicon to get a demo-version or order your customized copy. RDPW main shell is hardware independent. All specific hardware-dependent functions are provided by separate programs -- hardware servers. During its operation RDPW can start these servers and support dynamic data exchange with them, sending commands, polling status and receiving results of operations. Servers inform RDPW about the existing hardware configuration, the names of devices in the system and their types.
RDPW screen contains the following elements:
RDPL (Radicon Device Programming Language) is an object-oriented interpreted script language, that makes easy to control the flow of events in a system. RDPL program window allows keyboard input, saving, loading and editing the program texts. It is a usual text editor, similar to Windows Notepad. It is supplied with standard File, Edit and Search commands. Once written, the saved scripts are available for repeated runs through the Files menu. RDPW log window receives current information from the program during its operation, and allows also manual input or editing of its content. It is also a text editor, just as the program window. When active, log contents may be changed or saved with standard File, Edit and Search commands. The data content and format of the log window is fully programmable, so it is easy to adapt it for subsequent data analysis. RDPW plot windows serve for graphical presentation of current data during the program run. While plotting, the maximum value in data series is calculated and indicated in the text bar of the plot window. The content of the plot window is fully progammable. Several plot windows may be opened to display different data sets in multichannel systems. Apart from RDPW, hardware servers provide manual control of device operations with use of mouse and a keyboard. For each device in the system a separate interactive window is provided by corresponding server. RDPW integrates various servers in a unique system and enables the user to automate all the operations being available with servers in a manual mode. The servers supplied with RDPW support the electronic control hardware produced by Radicon Ltd. This hardware is based on microprocessor controller cards for USB or Ethernet channels of control. Each controller has its internal clock and supports all the device-specific operations in real time. Thus the higher-level software can work in multitasking Windows environment not breaking or delaying real time operations. At its present state RDPW supports RHS servers. The server interacts with one or more microprocessor controller MC cards. Each MC card can control up to 14 devices. RHS allows easy reconfiguration to adapt its operation to existing hardware. "Hardware configuration" dialog provides the setup of existing controller cards and allows to create the devices for each card, describe their types and assign a unique alias name to each device. Each device (stepping motor drives, detector cards, relay cards, angular encoder cards etc.) has also its own setup menu according to its type. This menu enables an individual tuning of the device, describing its hardware properties, as presence of status sensors, etc., and setting the time-outs for device operations, if necessary. As a whole this system provides the most compact, flexible and inexpensive automation of a wide range of experimental equipment. Custom-developed servers are available on special request.
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