Concepts

SpecMan4EPR does all device programming prior to starting of a pulse sequence and then waits till the end of data acquisition to start new sequence programming. Events of a pulse sequence can not trigger any SpecMan4EPR activity. Instead such an activity is implemented on hardware. This very efficient utilization of connected hardware makes the program undemanding for computing power.

The SpecMan4EPR Experiment is a description of rules and steps to perform an experiment and, data that was generated by this experiment. The experiment outcome can be represented by an N-dimensional (up to 4D) array. The rules are defined using variables that encapsulate device settings and Pulse Programming Language (PPL) script for pulse sequence definition. Any setting of a real device can be associated with an arbitrary named variable. By assigning a value to this variable one can bring a device to a certain state or generate particular output. Pulse sequence is executed and data are collected for every Experiment point. Experiment can be edited using the Experiment Editor and loaded from / stored to files that have a dedicated format .

The devices that SpecMan4EPR can control are described in the Device Configuration. The configuration defines also device specific settings, ranges of values, safe, start-up and shut-down values. Device Configuration Wizard is assisting user in configuration of the program. The part of the program that directly interact with the connected device drivers is called Spectrometer.

The general sequence of actions, synchronization of different devices and error handling is performed by the heart of SpecMan4EPR, the Kernel.

The SpecMan4EPR generates pulse sequences according to the PPL script, PPL variables and Pulse Configuration. The most sophisticated part of Kernel, Pulse Engine, is a virtual machine that interprets the PPL Assembler commands. Pulse Engine supports user-defined Pulse Commands that allow to generate a sequence of pulses on the associated hardware with the single word in the PPL script. The description of the Pulse Commands is loaded from the Pulse Configuration created by the Pulse Setup Wizard. Using the Experiment Editor any PPL variable can be defined as an independent experimental parameter.

The SpecMan4EPR GUI provides visualization and full control over the preparation and flow of the Experiment.