Building your own simulated instruments

PyVISA-sim provides some simulated instruments but the real cool thing is that it allows you to write your own in simple YAML files.

Here we will go through the structure of such a file, using the one provided with pyvisa-sim as an example. The first line you will find is the specification version:

spec: "1.1"

This allow us to introduce changes to the specification without breaking user’s code and definition files. Hopefully we will not need to do that, but we like to be prepared. So, do not worry about this but make sure you include it.

The rest of the file can be divided in two sections: devices and resources. We will guide you through describing the Lantz Example Driver

devices

It is a dictionary that defines each device, its dialogues and properties. The keys of this dictionary are the device names which must be unique within this file. For example:

devices:
    HP33120A:
        <here goes the device definition>
    SR830:
        <here goes the device definition>

The device definition is a dictionary with the following keys:

eom

Specifies the end-of-message for each instrument type and resource class pair. For example:

eom:
  ASRL INSTR:
    q: "\r\n"
    r: "\n"

means that ASRL INSTR resource queries are expected to end in rn and responses end in n. The q, r pair is a common structure that will repeat in dialogues, getters and setters.

You can specify the eom for as many types as you like. The correct one will be selected when a device is assigned to a resource, as we will see later.

error

The error key specifies the default message to be given when a message is not understood or the user tries to set a property outside the right range. For example:

error: ERROR

This means that the word ERROR is returned.

If you want to further customize how your device handles errors, you can split the error types in two: command_error which is returned when fed an invalid command or an out of range command, or query_error which is returned when trying to read an empty buffer.

error:
  response:
    command_error: null_response
  status_register:
    - q: "*ESR?"
      command_error: 32
      query_error: 4

In addition to customizing how responses are generated you can specify a status register in which errors are tracked. Each element in the list specifies a single register so in the example above, if both a command_error and query_error are raised, then querying ‘*ESR?’ will return ‘36’.

dialogues

This is one of the main concepts of PyVISA-sim. A dialogue is a query which may be followed by a response. The dialogues item is a list of elements, normally q, r pairs. Fore example:

.. code-block:: yaml

dialogues:

q: “?IDN” r: “LSG Serial #1234”

If the response (r) is not provided, no response will be given by the device. Conversely, if null_response is provided for response (r), then no response will be given by the device as well.

You can have as many items as you want.

properties

This is the other important part of the device. Consider it as a dialogue with some memory. It is a dictionary. The key is the name of the property and the value is the property definition. For example:

properties:
  frequency:
    default: 100.0
    getter:
      q: "?FREQ"
      r: "{:.2f}"
    setter:
      q: "!FREQ {:.2f}"
      r: OK
    specs:
      min: 1
      max: 100000
      type: float

This says that there is a property called frequency with a default value of 100.0.

To get the current frequency value you need to send ?FREQ and the response will be formatted as {:.2f}. This is the PEP3101 formatting specification.

To set the frequency value you need to send !FREQ followed by a number formatted as {:.2f}. Again this is the PEP3101 formatting specification but used for parsing.

If you want know more about it, take a look at the stringparser library.

If setting the property was successful, the response will be OK. If there was an error, the response will be ERROR (the default). You can specify an error-specific error message for this setter as:

e: Some other error message.

Finally you can specify the specs of the property:

specs:
  min: 1
  max: 100000
  type: float

You can define the minimum (min) and maximum (max) values, and the type of the value (float, int, str). You can also specify the valid values, for example:

specs:
  valid: [1, 3, 5]

Notice that even if the type is a float, the communication is done with strings.

resources

It is a dictionary that binds resource names to device types. The keys of this dictionary are the resource names which must be unique within this file. For example:

resources:
    ASRL1::INSTR:
        device: device 1
    USB::0x1111::0x2222::0x1234::INSTR:
        device: device 1

Within each resource, the type is specified under the device key. The associated value (e.g device 1) must corresponds to one of the keys in the devices dictionary that is explained above. Notice that the same device type can be bound to different resource names, creating two different objects of the same type.

You can also bind a resource name to device defined in another file. Simply do:

ASRL3::INSTR:
    device: device 1
    filename: myfile.yaml

The path can specified in relation with the current file or in an absolute way.

If you want to use a file which is bundled with PyVISA-sim, just write:

ASRL3::INSTR:
    device: device 1
    filename: default.yaml
    bundled: true