March 12, 2018
How to Use Decorators to Validate Input
Python is rich in resources that can shorten the time it takes to
develop new programs and simplify repetitive tasks. Decorators are one
of such elements but more often than not they are not considered by less
experienced developers. Adding decorators to the syntactic toolbox can
be of great use in different contexts, and in this article, we are going
to discuss how can they help you when communicating with a device. The
example code can be found in our Github
repository.
Read Article
March 9, 2018
Virtual Environment is a Must-Have Tool
When you start developing software, it is of utmost importance to have
an isolated programming environment in which you can control precisely
the packages installed. This will allow you, for example, to use
experimental libraries without overwriting software that other programs
use on your computer. Isolated environments allow you, for example, to
update a package only within that specific environment, without altering
the dependencies in every other development you are doing.
Read Article
Feb. 28, 2018
How to Control a Device Through the Network
In the lab, it is common to find different computers connected to
specific devices. For example,when you keep older PCs which are able to
communicate with very specific hardware. You may also have different
computers when there are mobile instruments that you share among
different users. In these situations it becomes very useful to be able
to exchange information between your main computer and a secondary one.
Read Article
Feb. 23, 2018
How to Write a Driver with Lantz
Lantz is a package written by several researchers who wanted to have a
framework to build instrumentation on Python. It is open source and
hosted on Github. Their description is
very clear:
Read Article
Feb. 21, 2018
Controlling a National Instruments Card with Python
One of the most common devices in a lab is a National Instruments acquisition card, also called a DAQ. As you probably know by now, the default programming environment for such cards is Lab View, but what you may not be aware is that there are libraries for interfacing with other languages. NI provides a common driver to all of their devices called NI-DAQmx and how to use their hardware through the C programming language is well documented.
Read Article
