Chromatography Forum

I am trying to find information on how to do this idea of mine. Agilent GCs being run via LAN by Chemstation software... that part I cannot change. However what I REALLY WOULD LIKE TO DO IS to have some small code somewhere that goes out and reads the status of the GC ie. running, not ready, ready, time left in run, etc. With that information I would like to have it sent wireless to an iPad2 where I would have icons showing the GC status. This iPad app could allow me to know at any second what is the status of 10+ GCs. App icons could be red for not ready, green for ready, and blue for running. Wouldn't this be cool!!??

All of that being the Grand Plan, I may not have the ability to program it.... but I would like to move that direction.

Anybody know anything about what I would like to do???

I do not know how to "get" that info from either chemstation or the GC. However, I do know that Agilent's new Open Lab software does what you want and they have an iPad app for it as well. I believe you can also control the instruments from your iPad (not just checking the status). If you have 10+ GCs you might want to consider the software upgrade. I don't have the software so I guess I really can't say how good it is or how well it works.

I used to be able to do a VPN connection to my companies network and control all the GC/MSs from my house. That way I would know if I needed to come in on the weekend and fix a botched analysis. Now that I have an Android I could easily set it up for VPN access to the network and do the same from my smart phone using a remote desktop app. I don't work there anymore though so there's no need to try it. If you have VPN access to your company's network you might want to try this from your iPad. Or if your iPad is already connected to the network you can download a RDP app and try this for full control of your GCs.

Considering that you are planning on writing a program to do this I would imagine that you may have already thought of this.