pysweepme

SweepMe! is a program to create measurement procedures in short time. The communication with the instruments is handled via instrument drivers ("Device Classes"), that are python based code snippets. To use these drivers in independent python projects, you can use pysweepme to load them including the creation of interface ports. The package pysweepme outsources parts of SweepMe! as open source MIT licensed code to allow loading drivers in your own scripts.

Installation

So far, only Windows is supported. Other systems might work as well but probably some modifications are needed. We recommend to use Python 3.9 64bit, as this is the python version and architecture targeted by us. In addition, several drivers in our instrument driver repository bring their own dependencies which are bundled for Python 3.9.

Use the command line (cmd) to install/uninstall:

install

pip install pysweepme 

install with force version

pip install pysweepme==1.5.6.10

uninstall

pip uninstall pysweepme

upgrade

pip install pysweepme --upgrade

Usage

1. Copy the drivers to a certain folder in your project folder, e.g "Devices" or to the public folder "CustomDevices".
2. Import pysweepme to your project.
3. Use 'get_driver' to load a driver.
4. See the source code of the driver to see which commands are available.
   A general overview of the semantic functions of a driver can be found in the SweepMe! wiki.

Example

import pysweepme

# find a certain folder that is used by SweepMe!
custom_devices_folder = pysweepme.get_path("CUSTOMDEVICES")

# folder is a path from which instrument drivers will be loaded
# port is a string, e.g. "COM1" or "GPIB0::24::INSTR"
mouse = pysweepme.get_driver("Logger-PC_Mouse", folder=".", port_string="")
mouse.connect()

print(mouse.read())

Version number

The version number of pysweepme correlates with the version number of SweepMe!. For example, pysweepme 1.5.5.x is related to SweepMe! 1.5.5.x, but the last digit of the version number can differ.

Source code

The source code can be found on github.

Instrument drivers

• Instrument drivers might depend on further python packages that are part of SweepMe! but are not shipped with pysweepme. In this case, these packages have to be installed using pip by solving the ImportErrors.
• Some Instrument drivers only work with Windows and will not work with other systems, e.g. due to dll files or certain third-party packages.
• Instrument drivers can be downloaded from https://sweep-me.net/devices or using the version manager in SweepMe!. Developers can also find the source code of the drivers in our instrument driver repository on github.
• SweepMe! instrument drivers have two purposes. They have semantic standard function to be used in SweepMe! but also wrap communication commands to easily call them with pysweepme. Not all SweepMe! instrument drivers come with wrapped communication commands, yet.

Changelog

You can find the list of changes on the releases page on github.

The changelog for pysweepme 1.5.5 is still available in the README of the 1.5.5 branch.