The MEMS project at CNRI is building a distributed network for prototyping MEMS devices. Users would construct designs on their computers, have the designs manufactured at one or more remote fabrication sites, be able to monitor the status of the request, and finally receive the finished devices. It's quite possible that one single device would undergo manufacturing steps performed at several different fabrication sites. Users need to be able to check on the status of a device partway through the manufacturing process. In future, we'll work on similar systems for other testing devices, such as wafer probers, profilometers, and scanning electron microscopes.
Users run a client program that provides a user interface, and displays the images.
A Linux machine connected to a Leica INM200 microscope, and equipped with a Polaroid Digital Microscope Camera. The server program, written as multithreaded Python code, sends commands to the microscope's hardware over two RS-232 connections, and retrieves images from the camera using the Python Imaging Library and an interface to the SANE scanning library. At the demo session, you'll be able to see the microscope interface and try it out, though it'll be running over a 33.6 modem connection, which is on the slow side. IEEE SoutheastCon'97, p234-256.