Welcome to PyOpticon’s documentation
This package creates graphical user interfaces that control, automate, and log data from physical devices via serial connections. It was originally developed for use in a laboratory setting with devices like valves, mass flow controllers, and spectrometers, though it will work well with many other devices that can communicate with a serial connection. Our goal is to enable graduate students and other researchers with basic Python knowledge to quickly equip experimental setups with data acquisition and automated control, allowing higher-quality and higher-throughput experimentation. See the Gallery tab for some examples.
The graphical user interfaces are called Dashboards and consist of many elements called Widgets that represent a physical device or a group of functions. Existing dashboards can be operated like desktop applications, without any coding knowledge, once they are created. Writing automation scripts, configuring new dashboards from existing widgets, and defining new widgets require as little coding as we could manage.
The project can be installed using pip from PyPI and its source code is available on Github. While it is in early development, it may be best to download and use the source from Github, since the author can then quickly send you patches for any use-case-specific bugs that become apparent. See the Overview page.