Talking to instruments:
Device integration hackathon

About 

Device integration is often mentioned as one of the main hurdles to set-up workflow orchestration for self-driving labs. Let's tackle it together as a global community!

𝗪𝗵𝘆? Our goal is to unify device communication to ultimately lower the barrier to entry, improve portability between lab orchestration software solutions and simplify maintenance.

𝗪𝗵𝗲𝗻? October 20-22nd

𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁? We will build SiLA-based connectors / servers using the official SiLA Python implementation and free and open-source Connector Development Kit, both maintained by UniteLabs  and subsequently make those connectors available in workflow orchestration software.  On day 1, we will give an overview of the SiLA standard and provide hands-on tutorials on connector development and deployment. Then it is up to you to practice it with devices of your choice (second half of day 1, and day 2)! On day 3, we will discuss our experiences, next steps and see a few things in action! The presented material can be accessed here.

𝗪𝗵𝗼 𝗰𝗮𝗻 𝗮𝘁𝘁𝗲𝗻𝗱? Anyone who has decent Python knowledge! Ideally, you also have a device available you would like to build a connector for. If you don’t have any available, we will provide info on low cost options that can be used to still learn about the underlying principles.

𝗪𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲? Around the globe, any organization is welcome to join! Argonne National Laboratory (Chicago, USA), Benji Maruyama's lab (Dayton, USA), Kedar Hippalgaonkar's team at Nanyang Technological University Singapore (Singapore), AI Robot-Driven Science Initiative (AIRDS) (Tokyo, Japan), RIKEN (Kobe, Japan), UniteLabs (Munich, Germany), ProperTune team at VTT (Finland) and the Acceleration Consortium (Toronto, Canada) are more than happy to host guests for this hackathon. If you could also host guests, please reach out to willi.gottstein@utoronto.ca.

𝗪𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲 is the teaching material? The teaching material is available at links and resources. 

Agenda

Day 1 - 20th of October 

• Welcome / setting the scene (10 min)

• Intro to SiLA (20 min, link)

• Technical deep dive on how to use a SiLA connector / server with Python code (30 min) 

• Technical deep dive how a connector (server) is developed (30 min)

• Hands-on on each site

Day 2 - 21st of October

• Hands-on on each site

Day 3 - 22nd of October

• 10-15 minutes per site on what was done, what worked well, where were issues, what would be great to do next