Speaker
Description
The neutron macromolecular crystallography instrument (NMX) at the European Spallation Source (ESS), is now under cold commissioning. As ESS evaluates user interface options for NMX scientific users, MXCuBE-Web — the latest generation of the widely adopted data acquisition software MXCuBE (Macromolecular Xtallography Customized Beamline Environment) — has been selected as the primary UI, marking its first-ever deployment for neutron diffraction.
MXCuBE is a free, open-source project started at ESRF in 2005, built through a growing international collaboration now spanning over 15 institutes including ESRF, MAX IV, HZB, EMBL, DESY, ELETTRA, LNLS, NSRRC, ANSTO, and ESS itself. Its Web incarnation, MXCuBE-Web, runs in any modern browser and is built on a Python/Flask REST backend, SocketIO bidirectional communication, and a React/Redux frontend.
Bringing MXCuBE-Web to NMX offers compelling advantages: a familiar MX user experience for easier experiment control, and a tighter collaboration and contributions back to the scientific and open-source software communities.
These opportunities also come with challenges, such as integrating MXCuBE with NICOS (ESS's standard instrument control layer, that communicates with the EPICS control system), and adapting UI widgets for neutron-specific workflows. Both fronts are progressing and will be discussed in this work, together with current status and lessons learned from this effort.
