A distributed monitoring system for working status of scientific instruments

In order to realize networked management of scientific instruments, a distributed monitoring system for their working status was developed. There were two solutions involved to acquire the working status data of scientific instruments. One is to detect their characteristic physical signals with sensors, and the other is to detect working parameters of their control software on their workstations with multiple ways. This paper focused on the latter one, which is convenient and low-risk to implement. In addition, Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) was applied to design the distributed monitoring system, and there were five categories of web services offered for its flexible integration with Management Information System (MIS) or client application. Now the distributed monitoring system has been put into trial running in several universities and institutes, with many large scientific instruments monitored.