Blu-Ice and the Distributed Control System: software for data acquisition and instrument control at macromolecular crystallography beamlines

The Blu‐Ice and Distributed Control System (DCS) software packages were developed to provide unified control over the disparate hardware resources available at a macromolecular crystallography beamline. Blu‐Ice is a user interface that provides scientific experimenters and beamline support staff with intuitive graphical tools for collecting diffraction data and configuring beamlines for experiments. Blu‐Ice communicates with the hardware at a beamline viaDCS, an instrument‐control and data‐acquisition package designed to integrate hardware resources in a highly heterogeneous networked computing environment. Together, Blu‐Ice and DCS provide a flexible platform for increasing the ease of use, the level of automation and the remote accessibility of beamlines. Blu‐Ice and DCS are currently installed on four Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory crystallographic beamlines and are being implemented at sister light sources.