PyVISA-py

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A PyVISA backend that implements a large part of the "Virtual Instrument Software Architecture" (VISA_) in pure Python (with the help of some nice cross platform libraries python packages!).

Description

PyVISA started as wrapper for the IVI-VISA library and therefore you need to install a VISA library in your system (National Instruments, Keysight, etc). This works most of the time, for most people. But IVI-VISA implementations are proprietary libraries that only works on certain systems. That is when PyVISA-py jumps in.

Starting from version 1.6, PyVISA allows to use different backends. These backends can be dynamically loaded. PyVISA-py is one of such backends. It implements most of the methods for Message Based communication (Serial/USB/GPIB/Ethernet) using Python and some well developed, easy to deploy and cross platform libraries

.. _VISA: https://www.ivifoundation.org/specifications/default.html#visa-specifications

VISA and Python

Python has a couple of features that make it very interesting for measurement controlling:

• Python is an easy-to-learn scripting language with short development cycles.
• It represents a high abstraction level, which perfectly blends with the abstraction level of measurement programs.
• It has a very rich set of native libraries, including numerical and plotting modules for data analysis and visualisation.
• A large set of books (in many languages) and on-line publications is available.

Requirements

• Python 3
• PyVISA

Optionally:

• PySerial (to interface with Serial instruments)
• PyUSB (to interface with USB instruments)
• linux-gpib (to interface with gpib instruments, only on linux)
• gpib-ctypes (to interface with GPIB instruments on Windows and Linux)
• psutil (to discover TCPIP devices across multiple interfaces)
• zeroconf (for HiSLIP and VICP devices discovery)
• pyvicp (to enable the Teledyne LeCroy proprietary VICP protocol)

Please refer to pyproject.toml <./pyproject.toml>_ for the specific version requirements.

Installation

Using pip::

$ pip install pyvisa-py

Documentation

The documentation can be read online at https://pyvisa-py.readthedocs.org