JEOL computer/monitor arrangements for Probe for EPMA

[glennpoirier]

I've attached a picture of PfE running with a JEOL 8230. The JEOL software is running on the left three monitors, PfE is running on the left monitor and the TV in the background (The TV is displaying Picturesnap). The arm in from of the TV is a support for a fourth LCD (I should get a hacksaw and get rid of it).

While I'm here, what are people using to switch mice and keyboards between computers? I'm using Multiplicity, but occasionally it gets confused and needs to be closed and restarted.

Cheers
Glenn

Edit by John: please remember to login to see attachments...

[Anette von der Handt]

Here is the current flight deck arrangement of my new 8530FPlus. I have two 43-inch Dell multiclient monitors (each can read the signal of up to 4 computers each) side-by-side.



I have three computers: one for PFE and the Thermo EDS; one for the EPMA software and one for the SXES and currently one monitor is dedicated to PFE and the EDS (not yet ported) and one is split for the JEOL software and the SXES.



I use Mouse without borders to connect them all and it works great most of the time, however, there are sometimes glitches that are annoying. I have somewhere are license for Swing Mouse and will give this one a try.

I will post some more details of my set-up in the general flight deck discussion http://probesoftware.com/smf/index.php?topic=173.msg6956#msg6956 if people are interested.

[John Donovan]

I've split this topic off from a topic in the Cameca board because it's more appropriate on the JEOL board.

Here is a pic of the monitor layout in Paul Carpenter's JEOL 8200 lab:



See photos of an 8230/8530 installation in the previous post, perhaps other of our users would be willing to share some pics of the monitor/computer arrangements in their labs...  here is a topic for general discussion of these issues:

http://probesoftware.com/smf/index.php?topic=173.0

[Karsten Goemann]

Those are some massive screens Anette!

On our 8530F Plus which was installed a year ago we (now) have 4 PCs with 5 screens in total.
As part of the package JEOL gave us very nice Dell Ultrasharp monitors that have very narrow bezels and great image quality.



The JEOL PC is using the top left and top middle 24" screens. The top right 24" screen is for the xCLent PC that also holds some additional auxiliary software (plasma cleaner, liquid nitrogen auto-refiller, UPS, room temperature monitoring)

The bottom left 27" screen is for Probe Software, bottom right 27" for Thermo Pathfinder EDS. Originally we had Probe Software and Thermo on a single PC using both 27" screens, but there were some hardware issues with the original installation and Thermo built a completely new PC and sent it over which we've installed as 4th PC. As that's now all working fine we'll probably leave it as it is. The 27" are 2560x1440 resolution so there is still enough screen real estate for PFE.

We're now using ShareMouse to operate with a single keyboard and mouse. On our other systems we have Synergy, but the later versions can't deal with a non-tiled screen arrangement and I was also struggling to it get to launch at boot on some PCs so I was looking for something else. ShareMouse works great including clipboard transfer between PCs and auto-launch, but it can get confused sometimes if a PC is temporarily removed from the network, as there is no fixed server/client structure or a way to save screen arrangements for occasions where one or two of the PCs are missing. We have a 4-way USB switch on the desk to switch keyboard and mouse manually between PCs if required. Interestingly I found out that Windows 10 will not show the mouse pointer without a mouse being physically connected, so the bottom two PCs each have an additional "dummy mouse" connected that is just lying behind those PCs.

On our Cameca SX100 we have a rack system for the screens and bolted the 2 posts straight through the desk top. But on the JEOL the desk top is not solid enough to do that, so we got an Atdec Spacedec stand for up to 6 screens that just sits on top of the desk. It's pretty heavy duty and easily deals with the weight of the screens. We drilled a few additional holes into the post to have the upper row of screens directly above the lower screens without gap. As a positive there is actually space behind the screens for 2 of the PCs. As the room is quite small we couldn't extend the available desk space.

[DavidAdams]

Heather and I have purchased a couple of the Adder Command and Control KVM switchs. They will allow for switching between 8 computers and monitors using one keyboard and mouse. The nice features these units have are USB switching (sadly only ver. 2.0) and the ability to save screen arrangements, which is great for moving vertically and diagonally as well as horizontally between screens. The keyboard and mouse switching is over USB and not the network so we don't have any network drop outs. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to get it to work with the old HP-UX JEOL software, but it does work on Windows and Mac platforms. There can be a slight delay in switching to older XP computers but with more modern computers I haven't noticed any switching delays between computers. I'm excited to see how it will work with our new 8530F+ arriving in a few months :-)