The LEGO laboratory: laser induced fluorescence

Abstract

Automation of laboratory experiments can save time and energy as well as improve results[1,2]. When automating experiments using high cost equipment such as diffractometers or laser sources it is often useful to prototype the set up; this aims to prevent damage to both the equipment and the users when applied to the actual system. In this project we propose a system of building these prototypes using LEGOTM and controlling it via a standard message brokering system. The message broker used in this project is the IBMTM Microbroker, part of the WebSphere software range[3]. This is a publish/subscribe application; data producers publish a message to the Microbroker on a given topic (the content typically as XML) and data consumers subscribe to a topic, when a message is published the Microbroker determines which subscribers should receive the message. The Microbroker acts as middleware in the system, keeping the producers and consumers independent. As these parts are independent, any software publishing control messages can be used in both the prototyping and deployment stages without modification as it will only be communicating the message broker. Similarly if the software generating the control messages is changed the consumer software will continue to work, this is shown in

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Identifiers

ORCID for Jeremy G. Frey: orcid.org/0000-0003-0842-4302

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