Port manager

Creating and handling port objects for use in a Device Class can be done via the SweepMe! port manager.

Supported port types

COM: standard PC serial port using RS-232 protocol

GPIB: an IEEE-488-Bus, a standard communication

USB: plug and play USB test and measurement device as supported by pyvisa

VB: a National Instrument VirtualBench device

Configuration

The following variables have to be set within the __init__ function of a Device Class:

In order to get the available ports listed in the GUI of the corresponding Measurement Class, choose desired port types by:

   self.port_types = ["COM", "GPIB", "USB", "VB"]

A port object is automatically created by

  self.port_manager = True

Further parameters can be changed through

  self.port_properties = {"baudrate" : 9600, "EOL": "\n",...}

Get a list of all port_properties using

  print self.port_properties

Communicating

If the port manager is activated, the port is automatically available within all functions of the sequencer procedure as the variable

  self.port

A message can be sent using

  self.port.write("string of the message without end-of-line/terminator character")

The answer of a device is acquired by

  var = self.port.read()