dvincentwest / pyvisa-drivers

pyvisa-drivers

A repository for community contributed instrument drivers using PyVISA

What is it?

Quite simply, it is meant to be a collection of community contributed instrument drivers with only these minimum requirements:

1. Written in Python and using PyVISA
2. Each driver is self contained

Installation

Clone this repository, or just download the drivers you need directly from the website. Each driver (either module or package) is self contained, so you can download the entire repository or download only the drivers that you need.

Why this, here and now?

A number of other projects already exist to provide a framework for building high quality instrument drivers with a consistent interface, such as LabPy, PyMeasure, Python-IVI and others. The goals of this repository are different. If nothing else, it can serve as a collection of community contributed examples demonstrating how to use PyVISA.

Beyond that the hope is that by removing the requirements of any particular convention, users will contribute what they have. Many python users will write their own driver for their own needs and likely will only implement the subset of instrument control required for their project. PyVISA users are strongly encouraged to contribute their code even if they feel it is incomplete. The philosophy of this repository is that a large collection of feature-incomplete drivers has its place, with the hope that over time users will implement the features they need and contribute what they have back to the repository.

How do I contribute a driver?

Fork this repository and submit a pull request.

Contributors are requested to put as much documentation in the code as possible using docstrings and comments.

Remember that drivers should be self-contained, meaning provided as a python module or a python package. An organization of drivers by vendor or instrument type has not been decided upon and probably won't be set up until a critical mass of drivers has been established, so for now, please put all self-contained drivers in the pyvisa-drivers/drivers/ directory.

Licensing

Drivers are by default distributed with the MIT license, the same as for PyVISA. If you wish to post a driver under a different license, please include your driver as a separate package and include a license file along with it.

How do I get help?

To be determined. @dvincentwest will be assuming primary responsibility for maintaining this repository but the drivers are provided without warranty or support. @dvincentwest will be screening code to look for anything out of the ordinary, but given the goals of this repository, support questions are likely to be similar to low-level PyVISA usage questions.

I will explore options for discussion mailing lists, probably setting something up in parallel to what PyVISA uses right now.

Driver Documention will be contained within the driver itself, although at some point in the future a documentation page may be established if the situation warrants it.