2. First steps¶
Once you have installed Exopy you are ready to set it up, then prepare and run your first measurement. The following sections will take you through those steps. More details about the instruments and how to customize your measurement will be given later on in this manual.
Contents
2.1. Starting the application¶
You can start Exopy either using the Anaconda Launcher, or simply using the exopy command at the command line:
$ exopy
If you are starting Exopy for the first time, you will be prompted to choose a folder in which the application will store a number of settings and also write the log file. In the following of this guide this directory will be referred to as the application directory.
When the application starts you should see this window:
.. todo:: add main window image
Note
The first start up can be pretty slow as the application needs to compile the application graphical user interface, but as the result of this process is cached subsequent start ups should be much faster.
The different panels can be re-organized, tabbed or reduced. The bottom panel is used for log messages, it will display messages from the application. The top left panel is used to edit measurements, actually multiple measurements can be edited at the same time and similar panels will be opened if necessary. The top right panel display the measurements waiting to be performed.
The next sections will detail how these panels work.
Note
The exopy command accepts some optional arguments. Use:
$ exopy -h
To learn more about the supported options.
Note
If you installed a broken extension package, Exopy may fail to start. In that case, the application should display a dialog explaining the issue. The easiest way to fix it is to uninstall the offending package and report the bug to its maintainer. If nothing works (and you have already set the application directory), you can have a look at the log file. If nothing works do not hesitate to contact the maintainer.
Note
Exopy is made out of different plugins providing different capabilities. To speed up the application start-up, only the needed plugin are actually started when launching it. When a new plugin starts, a dialog will show up describing the error(s) if any occurred. At any time you can access a summary of those issues under the menu Tools/Show errors report.
2.2. Creating a measurement¶
A measurement is made of different pieces :
a hierarchy of tasks to perform.
a set of tools which are mostly optional.
The tasks are the true backbone of the measurement. Each one describes an elementary step of the measurement. They are organized in a tree structure hence allowing more flexibility than simply nested loops. Information can be passed between Tasks through a shared database.
When creating a new blank measurement (using the File/New measurement menu), the panel added to the graphical interface allows you to edit the tasks and the tools. This panel contains a tree view of the task hierarchy and to its right the different editors, organized in tabs, that can be used to edit the hierarchy. To edit the tools, you need to click the Edit tools button ; the edition of tools will be described in Monitors and tools
Each measurement has a name, an id and a root directory. The name is intented to describe the purpose of the measurement while its id can act as a counter to discriminate multiple execution of the same measurement - it should be a unique identifier. The root directory is use to save an ‘.meas.ini’ file corresponding to the measurement and the associated log file. It can also be accessed by the tasks to serve as root directory to save the measured data.
The task hierarchy starts empty, with only the root task. From there you can use either the tree context menu or the button in the editor to the right of the tree to add a first task. Further tasks can be added using the context menu of the tree or the ‘>’ in the standard editor (selected by default). The tree view can also be used to rename the tasks and re-organize them with drag-and-drops. The standard editor allows to set most of the tasks parametersand is sufficient for basic measurement (the role of the other will be described in measurement_edition_editors).
Once you click to add a task, a dialog window opens to allow you to select a task. When selecting a task, a description will appear on the right and if the task necessitates some parametrization the appropriate tools will be provided. Each task needs a name ; one is provided by default but for clarity sake it may be best to change it.
Warning
It is not possible to have two Tasks with the same name at a given nesting in the hierarchy.
Once the task is added to the hierarchy, you can edit its parameters. A number of them can be specified as formulas following the python syntax (in this case the tooltip of the widget should give a hint about what is expected and allowed in the field). In the formula fields, one can access the values stored in the database using the following syntax : {TaskName_entryname}. The fields provide autocompletion, suggesting the different possibilities and hence avoiding the need to remember all the possibilities.
Note
In the standard editor the small button shown close to each task can be use to add/move/remove the tasks.
Note
For task using a physical instrument, you need to specify the instrument to use. How to register an instrument so that it can be selected in the task is explained in the next section.
Once you are happy with your measurement you can save it using either the menu or the button in the panel. Measures are saved under the ‘.ini’ format which is text-based and can easily be re-edited if need be.
Note
You can also save a measurement using ‘Ctrl+S’. If you are editing multiple measurements, the last measurement you selected will be saved.
The last step before executing your measurement is to enqueue it. When enqueueing a measurement automatic checks are run, validating for instance that all the formulas entered can be evaluated. If the checks pass the measurement will appear as enqueued, BUT the editor won’t be closed. It must nonetheless be noted that editing this measurement won’t change the state of the enqueued measurement. If some checks do not pass or raise some warning a dialog will pop-up. If only warnings where emitted (for example the measurement will override some existing files), you can choose to enqueue the measurement nevertheless. Actually even if some errors occurred you can force the enqueueing but you should have a very good reason to do so.
Note
You can re-edit an enqueued measurement by opening a dedicated dialog using the button next to the measurement name in the queue.
The next section will shortly review aditional options to customize the measurement, before moving on to the execution.
2.2.1. Editing the tools¶
The tools are optional and allow to customize three parts of the execution:
pre-execution hooks are run before starting the actual measurement and can be used to validate the parameters in the measurement or collect the state of the application.
monitors are active while the main part of the measurement is running and can report on the progress of the measurement.
post-execution hooks are run after the main part of the measurement has been executed and can run even if the main part of measurement failed.
More details can be found in Monitors and tools.
Congratulations, your measurement is now waiting for execution ! The next section will describe how to start it and what happens next.
2.3. Running a measurement¶
Starting the measurement is straightforward as you simply have to click on the ‘Start’ button. If no ‘engine’ is currently selected (an engine is responsible for executing the tasks), you will be prompted to choose one. The default one coming with Exopy will add another log panel just by the one use by the application.
For each enqueued measurement, the execution will happen as follow:
the checks are run once again as at enqueuing some of them may have been skipped (for example if a running measurement was using an instrument, its properties could not be tested).
the pre-execution hooks are executed.
the main task is handed over to the engine for execution. It is at this step that the monitors will be started if you attached any to your measurement.
the post-execution hooks are called.
Note
The engine is responsible for the execution of tasks. Exopy comes with a builtin one executing the tasks in a different process to limit interferences between the edition and the execution of measurement.
Note
If a hook also executes tasks, it will also hand them over to the engine for execution.
At any step of the execution, you can pause the measurement or stop. Note however, that if a long running task is under way and it does listen for the proper signals you may have to wait for this task to complete before seeing the execution pause or stop.
Pausing can be handy if you need to manually change a parameter on one instrument for example. When you resume the measurement, all previously known states of the instruments will be re-initialized so that your intervention does not affect the state of the measurement.
When stopping a measurement, you will be asked whether you want or not to run the post-execution hook(s) (if any is present). This is because you may have included safety settings in the post hook, hence you need to be sure they will be executed. Note that when stopping, you choose to either stop the current measurement and execute the next ones or stop everything.
Note
After trying to properly stop a measurement, you will be offered to force the operation. This should have an immediate effect on the measurement execution but may leave some systems (the VISA library) in an undefined state.
Note
While a measurement is running the application will prevent closing to avoid crashing everything by clicking accidentally on the ‘x’ button.
Those are the basics, but to be able to run a meaningful measurement you will need to use some instruments. The next section will explain how those are handled in Exopy and how to register one so that it can be used in a measurement.