Automated monitoring to reduce electron microscope downtime

High-end transmission electron microscopes are complex and sensitive instruments. Failure of one of the external supplies, malfunction of the microscope hardware or maloperation are typical reasons for subsystems to fail. Especially if undiscovered for a longer period of time, this can cause unnecessary downtime, compromising user access and increasing operating costs. Utilizing the software introduced in this article ("MoniTEM"), we have succeeded to reduce downtime of an FEI Tecnai Polara by coupling constant monitoring of critical subsystems with automatic, remote feedback to the system supervisor, ensuring immediate problem solving. The software described here is freely available from http://www.imba.oeaw.ac.at/monitem/ and can be readily adapted for use with other FEI transmission electron microscopes.