One of the opportunities we seized when starting our lab from scratch was to set things up around the concepts of "", "" and right from the get go. There are many reasons for choosing this approach, one of them is that we spend tax-payers' money on advancing research, and what we do with this money should benefit everyone rather than stay behind closed door (or closed software/hardware that is). The is a good starting point if you are interested in learning more.
This page will be a living document with our projects, links to source code, CAD files etc. and other helpful information. Some of these links will point to our own developments, others to already available solutions that we use and adapted. If you are interested in how (and why) we are doing this, please drop us an email. Similar, let us know if you think we missed something useful.
Our AFMD Group on GitHub:
We've got our own which we use for our code as well as the hardware design for our experimental setups. If you find a strange reference with an alpha-numeric code in the experimental parts of our publications, then our GitHub page is where to find further information.
Used Open Source Software:
Most of our computers run as operating system in the one or the other flavour. and are the departmental choice and the most common one, but and special adaptations e.g. for the are in use as well. Below you find a list of software we find useful. Many of the software packages have active repositories on GitHub, Gitlab or SourceForge and often a ppa is available for easy installation in Ubuntu.
- : a full office suite (text, spreadsheet, presentation, etc.) and one of the main driving forces behind the (ODF), an international ISO/IEC standard for storing documents (note: Microsoft's own format isn't). The UK government is recommending ODF (and PDFs) for . How much people adhere to this recommendation is a different question...
- : much of the control software for our measurement hardware and our data analysis (incl. plotting) is done with python, a high-level, general-purpose, interpreted, dynamic programming language. If you want to know what it can do, have a look at .
- : need some vector graphics for your thesis? Try Inkscape! It's also capable of many things that e.g. Adobe Designer can do, but it doesn't cost an arm and a leg, and doesn't tie you into a subscription service...
- : a powerful graphics program for dealing with pictures of all kinds.
- : if you cannot do it with python and/or prefer an environment that looks like Matlab, then Octave is a good option. It is a high-level interpreted language, primarily intended for numerical computations.
- : software for interactive scientific graphing and data analysis, similar to Origin, i.e. for those who prefer point & click rather than scripting for generating graphs, but open source!
- : a simple 2D CAD modeller, usually works quite good, but needs dxf files.
- : a powerful 3D CAD program. Unfortunately, it sometimes struggles with files from proprietary software like AutoDesk Inventor.
- : good for generating models for 3D printing. It is also very mature and widely used, though the scripting language needs some time to getting used to.
- : it can import, modify and export industry standard .step files, making it suitable for anything from CNC to 3D printing. It also uses python as scripting language, which makes it very powerful. The challenge is that CadQuery is work in progress, but seems to have very active maintainers and a growing community.
- : a nifty program for SPM (scanning probe microscopy) data visualization and analysis, e.g. for AFM images.
- : DAWN, the Data Analysis WorkbeNch, is an Eclipse based application for scientific data analysis, which we use mainly for the analysis of our X-ray data. The can be found on Github.
- : the Python wrapper for the Virtual Instrument Software Architecture (VISA) library, which is used to control our instruments. Given it's continuing development, it is recommended to use the latest version from the pyvisa homepage or .
- One of the many open source web browsers, e.g. , or .
- Similarly, there are various open source email clients, e.g. and its calender add-on . One can even get it to talk to MS 365 Servers, if needed, using the .
Other useful Open Source Code:
- : A drift-diffusion simulation code for simulating organic solar cells, developed by Wolfgang Tress, a former PhD student at the IAPP of the TU Dresden, Germany. Wolfgang's thesis can be found .
- is a very powerful and well maintained tool to simulate organic/perovskite solar cells, organic field effect transistors (OFETs), and organic light emitting diodes (OLEDs). Developed by at the University of Nottingham.
Open Data Exchange Formats:
- : an annotated tabular data format, ideal for adding metadata in a structured and machine readable format for tabular data. We use it for everything from IV curves to EQE and transient measurement data.
- : a "Self Describing Data Set" file format developed at Argonne National Laboratory. SDDS and FMF share some similarities.
- : Hierarchical Data Format (HDF) is a set of file formats (HDF4, HDF5) designed to store and organize large and complex data collections. It's used for example for our beamtime data at .
Used Open Hardware:
- : a tiny and affordable computer that you can use lots of things, including practical projects.
- : Arduino is an open-source electronics platform based on easy-to-use hardware and software. It's intended for anyone making interactive projects.
- : an open source rapid prototyping system. Can be convinced to become a spray coater;-), see .
Further Information on Open Science:
Below are some more links that contain information about open science, hardware and software:
- has a list of sites where open info for science can be found. See .
- , a report of the .