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Ion CONtrol Software (ICON)

Version Python Versions Documentation Status License: MIT

The Ion Control Software (ICON) is a control and data-acquisition framework developed in the Trapped Ion Quantum Computing research group at ETH Zurich. It is designed for laboratories that run experiments written in Python (with the pycrystal framework) on M-Action/Quench hardware.

ICON acts as the interface between user-defined Python experiments and the laboratory control hardware. It provides:

  • An overview of available experiments by parsing the experiment library (a repository containing hardware and experiment descriptions).
  • Access to all experiment parameters, including those from external devices integrated via pydase services.
  • A job history and live data visualisation for running and past experiments.
  • Support for parameter scans, including device parameters from connected services.

The system is built with:

  • Backend: Python (API server, scheduler, pre-/post-processing, hardware orchestration).
  • Frontend: React/TypeScript (configuration, monitoring, visualisation).
  • Databases:
    • SQLite - job and device history
    • InfluxDB - parameter time series
    • HDF5 - experiment results