Agilent 490/CP-4900 software options

[csirac2]

I'm working with a former employer who is considering a 3rd CP-4900 (Agilent 490 I suppose). These GCs operate in an industrial mobile laboratory, where they cycle continuously (without any babysitting, apart from calibrations) for weeks at a time.

Replacing Galaxie is also an urgent priority. Replacement of the overall data management system is happening at the same time; among other things, it digests the analyses from Galaxie.

What are the software options for controlling the instrument? One of the off-the-shelf systems under consideratoin supports EZChrom. I will be talking to Agilent next week about this, but I would appreciate any comparisons with Galaxie/Star WS. Hopefully it's a more stable product. The ease with which we can break Galaxie and/or Sequencer is depressing.

Important considerations:
- Automatiion. Galaxie Sequencer just doesn't cut it - we were forced to develop AutoIT scripts, which is a nasty (unreliable) hack to accompllish a depressingly simple requirement: that the data acquisition server can fire up the GC by itself.
- Chromatogram export options. Ability to dump CSV/NetCDF of each - method/parameters used, calibration used, etc.
- Data aggregation. For example, build a CSV file with columns containing injection date-time, method used, calibration used, followed by column per gas component.

If only there was a Linux option - I guess we'll have to keep running GC software on a dedicated Windows PC.

[varossf]

Hm, the current software is OpenLAB CDS EZChrom that can do the job.
- Sequence can be setup and to run e.g. every 5 minutes to pull a sample from the line. This built-in automation allows you to run run it unattended
- Export can be established in various ways. Predefined export formats on a run-by-run basis, own defined formats (with Advanced Reports) on a run-by-run basis or entire sequence export, data aggregation so to speak
- Chromatogram export can be done in wmf

Any more questions? If you feel unsatisfied after your visit to Agilent please drop me an email.

[csirac2]

Thanks varossf,

Sadly, Galaxie has almost all of the selling points you mention there. But, for example, its automation features were quite useless for process applications because a technician must babysit the data acquisition server to help Sequencer Shell pick a sequence to run, an instrument to use (even if only one is configured) and then finally activate the run. We couldn't script things so that the GC would just start without any human intervention. We eventually found a solution with AutoIT but this is just a hack and very unprofessional. In hindsight we should have considered the PRO (Modbus/RS485) version of the CP-4900 more seriously. Also WMF isn't really suitable (want to curate & process the data externally), but I'm hopeful WMF is only of several options we can get from OpenLAB.

I spoke to the Agilent account manager today who was very helpful. Glad to see there is a path away from Galaxie.

I have a further phone call scheduled with an Agilent technician who can confirm OpenLAB capabilities with me.

Thanks