Package Overview

Drivers

The drivers subpackage is the primary focus of Instrumental, and its purpose is to provide relatively high-level ‘drivers’ for interfacing with lab equipment. Currently it supports:

• Drivers
  • Cameras
    • PCO Cameras
    • PCO Pixelfly Cameras
    • Thorlabs TSI Cameras
    • Thorlabs DCx (UC480) Cameras
    • Photometrics Cameras
  • DAQs
    • NI DAQs
  • Function Generators
    • Tektronix Function Generators
  • Lasers
    • Toptica FemtoFErb 1560 Laser
  • Lock-in Amplifiers
    • SRS Model SR850 Lock-in Amplifier
  • Motion Control
    • Thorlabs Motorized Filter Flip Mount (MFF10X)
    • Thorlabs K10CR1 Rotation Stage
    • T-Cube DC Servo Motor Controller (TDC001)
    • Attocube ECC100 Motion Controller
  • Multimeters
    • HP 34401A Multimeter
  • Power Meters
    • Newport Power Meters
    • Thorlabs Power Meters
  • Scopes
    • Tektronix Oscilloscopes
  • Spectrometers
    • Bristol Spectrum Analyzers
    • Thorlabs CCS Spectrometers
  • Wavemeters
    • Burleigh Wavemeters

It should be pretty easy to write drivers for other VISA-compatible devices by using VisaMixin and Facets. Check out Writing Drivers for more info. Driver submissions are greatly appreciated!

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Other Subpackages

There are several other subpackages within Instrumental. These may eventually be moved to their own separate packages.

Plotting

The plotting module provides or aims to provide

• Unit-aware plotting functions as a drop-in replacement for pyplot
• Easy slider-plots

Fitting

The fitting module is a good place for curating ‘standard’ fitting tools for common cases like

• Triple-lorentzian cavity scans
• Ringdown traces (exponential decay)

It should also provide optional unit-awareness.

Tools

The tools module is used for full-fledged scripts and programs that may make use of all of the other modules above. A good example would be a script that pulls a trace from the scope, auto-fits a ringdown curve, and saves both the raw data and fit parameters to files in a well-organized directory structure.