Fairmat 2024: actuators and sensors in NXenvironment

[lukaspie]

This PR is aimed at further elaborating NXenvironment:

• A new base class NXactuator is added that closely resembles NXsensor, but instead of sensing something (like e.g. an NXsensor describing a thermocouple), it produces an actuation/output (think a sample heater for example).
• Unnamed NXsensor and NXactuator are added to NXenvironment. In addtion, a value field is added to NXenvironment, which shall only be used when there is no ctuator/sensor that controls/measures the environment parameters, but the user would still like to give a value for it. An example would be a measured at room temperature where the temperature is only estimated.
• To describe the hardware of such sensors and actuators (or indeed any other instrument parts), a new base class NXfabrication was added, containing information about the vendor, model, serial number, etc.
• The base class NXpid was moved from contributed to base_classes, since it is used in NXactuator and accepted base classes should (as far as we understand) only make use of base classes that are themselves also accepted (see discussion below). EDIT: NXpid to be handled in Move NXpid to base classes #1522.

[lukaspie]

Dev notes to keep track:

• NXfabrication: implemented suggested edits
• NXsensor: ok
• NXactuator: implemented suggested edits
• NXenvironment: ok

depends on / blocked by:

• implementation of nameType = "partial" -> handled by UPPERCASE to indicate flexible names #1485

ToDo:

• Moved NXpid from contributed_definitions to base_classes -> will probably require another NIAC vote (cc @sanbrock)

[phyy-nx]

@lukaspie can you write a description at the top of the file? Also, can you say more about the TODO comment on NXpid? NXpid was not voted on. Indeed, only the changes voted on are allowed, otherwise we need a new vote. Thanks!

[lukaspie]

@lukaspie can you write a description at the top of the file? Also, can you say more about the TODO comment on NXpid? NXpid was not voted on. Indeed, only the changes voted on are allowed, otherwise we need a new vote. Thanks!

I added a description.

My understanding is that accepted base classes should only make use of base classes that are themselves also accepted. Since NXactuator (newly introduced and already voted on here) uses the base class NXpid, NXpid was moved from contributed to base_classes. We only realized this after the vote had been made. What's your opinion on this? Can base classes that are in the base_classes folder (i.e., accepted) cite base classes in contributed? We had the same problem with NXlens_em in #1407.

[lukaspie]

@phyy-nx following up on the discussion here and in #1407, I removed NXpid (for which there was no vote yet) and made a new PR for it (see #1522) for which there will need to be a separate vote. With these changes, I think the PR here only contains things that have already been ratified and can thus be reviewed/merged.

[phyy-nx]

This was already approved by NIAC vote (#1451 (comment)). After these changes are done, we can merge.

[phyy-nx]

attached_to --> actuation_target

Should be a NeXus path as opposed to a description

[lukaspie]

changed

[lukaspie]

@phyy-nx all comments addressed, feel free to finally review and merge. Thanks!