Nex­pe­rion Sen­tinel is a tool designed to max­imise your trans­mis­sion elec­tron microscope’s uptime by con­stantly mon­i­tor­ing para­me­ters from the microscope’s crit­i­cal sub­sys­tems, its periph­er­als, and its envi­ron­ment. Alarms via E-mail or cell phone short mes­sage are trig­gered if para­me­ters fall out­side of the user-defined range, val­ues are logged and can be checked online via an Inter­net sta­tus page.

Inte­grated Para­me­ters

Depend­ing on the microscope’s and Sentinel’s con­fig­u­ra­tion, the fol­low­ing sub­sys­tems and para­me­ters are inte­grated into the tool:

• Vac­uum sys­tem
• High ten­sion sys­tem and emit­ter
• Spec­i­men stage
• Water chillers: state, input and out­put tem­per­a­ture
• Pres­sure of media sup­plies: Com­pressed air, N₂, …
• Cryo­gen level
• Envi­ron­men­tal con­di­tions: tem­per­a­ture, humid­ity, and floor flood­ing
• Net­work con­nec­tiv­ity
• Free space on local disks and remote shares
• User log-ins

These para­me­ters are sub­ject to con­stant updates as our work devel­ops and grows. Con­tact us to dis­cuss the imple­men­ta­tion of addi­tional para­me­ters to cover your indi­vid­ual needs.

Nex­pe­rion Sen­tinel comes with a graph­i­cal user inter­face for con­fig­u­ra­tion of the highly cus­tomiz­able mon­i­tor­ing and log­ging facil­ity.

Alarms

Nexperion’s Sen­tinel is a great tool for a busy facil­ity like ours, where up-time is key. Now we catch small prob­lems before they turn into major issues caus­ing micro­scope down-timeDr. Thomas Heuser, Head Elec­tron Microscopy, Vienna Bio­cen­ter Core Facil­i­ties GmbH, Aus­tria

One of Sentinel’s unique fea­tures is alert­ing of sys­tem super­vi­sors instantly in case of prob­lems, allow­ing a prompt response to an issue and elim­i­nat­ing unnec­es­sary down­time and loss in pro­duc­tiv­ity. These alarms and can­cel­la­tions can be sent in sev­eral dif­fer­ent ways:

• E-Mail
• Mobile phone short mes­sage (SMS)
• Local noti­fi­ca­tion

Sta­tus Web­site

Option­ally, a sta­tus web­site can be made acces­si­ble for each instru­ment on the Inter­net. On this (mobile-friendly) site, all para­me­ters are listed with actual and expected val­ues. A color cod­ing allows a quick sur­vey of the sit­u­a­tion. To receive a more detailed impres­sion, visit the demo page.

For facil­i­ties with instal­la­tions of Nex­pe­rion Sen­tinel on mul­ti­ple micro­scopes, a “Sys­tems Overview” fea­ture is avail­able, pro­vid­ing the most impor­tant details of all instru­ments at a glance. An exam­ple with two sys­tems can be found at our demo page.

Log­ging Facil­ity

Nex­pe­rion Sentinel’s log­ging facil­ity records events and micro­scope para­me­ters such as vac­uum lev­els, high ten­sion, or user logins to text files read­able with any spread­sheet appli­ca­tion. Review­ing his­tor­i­cal data can facil­i­tate an under­stand­ing of where issues started or how they evolved over longer peri­ods of time or may be used for user log­ging.

Prod­uct Gallery

Depend­ing on the ver­sion of Sen­tinel, the con­fig­u­ra­tion of the spe­cific instru­ment, and the options ordered with Sen­tinel, more or fewer options than depicted in these screen­shots are avail­able.

Sys­tem Require­ments

Nex­pe­rion Sen­tinel is avail­able for the FEI Tec­nai, Titan, and Talos plat­forms with the TEM Script­ing Adapter as well as for JEOL TEM­CON and TEM­CEN­TER based micro­scopes. Please inquire for more detailed con­fig­u­ra­tion require­ments and other instru­ments.

For con­nec­tion with exter­nal sen­sors (envi­ron­ment, chillers), one or more free USB ports are required. For remote noti­fi­ca­tion and the Inter­net sta­tus page, a pos­si­bil­ity to set up an Inter­net con­nec­tion (e.g. via port for­ward­ing) is required.

See also “Trade­marks”.