Integrated software for a macromolecular crystallography synchrotron beamline

A package of software has been produced for the operation of the synchrotron beamline X12-C at the National Synchrotron Light Source at Brookhaven National Laboratory. Years of observing common user mistakes has enabled the production of software that reduces user errors significantly. Users of the beamline communicate with all the experimental apparatus, including both the data-collection equipment and the beamline components, including the monochromator, through an easy-to-use graphical user interface (GUI). Important features of the system are (1) its modularity, so that different underlying programs or different apparatus can be incorporated easily; (2) its ease of use, minimizing both user errors and training effort; and (3) that most of the experimental operations and parameters are logged automatically, again minimizing errors and facilitating more-or-less automatic reduction of the data. Features of the software are useful enough to have been incorporated into operations at other synchrotron beamlines.