Python in the Lab

PyVISA started as wrapper for the NI-VISA library and therefore you need to install National Instruments VISA library in your system. This works most of the time, for most people. But sometimes you need to test PyVISA without the devices or even without VISA. Starting form version 1.6 , PyVISA allows to use different backends. These backends can be dynamically loaded. PyVISA-sim is one of such backends. It implements most of the methods for Message Based communication (Serial/USB/GPIB/Ethernet) in a simulated environment . The behavior of simulated devices can be controlled by a simple configuration in plain text . In the near future, you will be able to load this from file to change it depending on your needs. To test it you need to install PyVISA 1.6 which is currently only available from GitHub: $ pip install -U https://github.com/hgrecco/pyvisa/zipball/master And then install: $ pip install -U https://github.com/hgrecco/pyvisa-sim/zipball/master     For...

PyVISA is a Python frontend for the VISA library that enables controlling all kinds of measurement equipment through GPIB, RS232, USB, Ethernet among others interfaces. PyVISA 1.6 release is close and it brings several new nice things. One of the most visible improvements is the addition of a comprehensive set of resources classes , each mapping to a one of the 13 types of resources. Each class implements the methods and attributes that the specific session can handle, providing a Pythonic way to interact with the device (See here ). This has allowed us to implement higher level functions such as the group execute trigger in the GPIB Interface. PyVISA 1.6 brings a much better way to query a device for values , providing a comprehensive API to convert back and from ASCII and binary blocks. An API to write values to a device has been added (See here ). PyVISA 1.6 is thread-safe . While the VISA library has always been thread-safe, PyVISA was not. We have refactored the code r...