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J. M. Hughes - Real world instrumentation with Python

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J. M. Hughes Real world instrumentation with Python
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Real World Instrumentation with Python
John M. Hughes
Beijing Cambridge Farnham Kln Sebastopol Tokyo A Note Regarding Supplemental - photo 1

Beijing Cambridge Farnham Kln Sebastopol Tokyo

A Note Regarding Supplemental Files

Supplemental files and examples for this book can be found at http://examples.oreilly.com/9780596809577/. Please use a standard desktop web browser to access these files, as they may not be accessible from all ereader devices.

All code files or examples referenced in the book will be available online. For physical books that ship with an accompanying disc, whenever possible, weve posted all CD/DVD content. Note that while we provide as much of the media content as we are able via free download, we are sometimes limited by licensing restrictions. Please direct any questions or concerns to .

Preface
John Hughes

This is a book about automated instrumentation , and the automated control systems used with automated instrumentation. We will look at how to use the Python programming language to quickly and easily implement automated instrumentation and control systems.

Automated instrumentation can be found in a wide variety of settings, ranging from research laboratories to industrial plants. As soon as people realized that collecting data over time was a useful endeavor, they also realized that they needed some way to capture and record the data. Of course, one could sit with a clock and a pad of paper, staring at thermometers, dials, and gauges, and write down numbers or other information every few minutes or so, but that gets tedious rather quickly. Its much easierand more reliableif the process can be automated. Fortunately, technology has advanced significantly since the days of handwritten logbooks and clockwork-driven strip chart recorders.

Nowadays, one can purchase inexpensive instrumentation for a wide variety of physical phenomena and use a computer to capture the data. Once a computer is connected to instrumentation, the possibilities for data collection, analysis, and control begin to expand in all directions, with the only real limitations being the ability to implement the necessary software and the implementers creativity.

The primary objective of this book is to show you how to create software that you can use to get a capable and user-friendly instrumentation or control application up and running with a minimum of hassle. To this end, we will work through the steps necessary to create applications that incorporate low-level interfaces to the real world via various types of input/output hardware. We will also examine some proven methods for creating programs that are robust and reliable. Special attention will be paid to designing the algorithms necessary to acquire and process the data. Finally, we will see how to display the results to a user and accept command inputs. It is my desire that you will find ideas here that you might take away and creatively apply to meet your own needs in a wide variety of settings.

Who Is This Book For?

This is a hands-on text intended for people who want or need to implement instrumentation systems, also known as data acquisition and control systems . You might be a researcher, a software developer, a student, a project lead, an engineer, or a hobbyist. The application might be an automated electronics test system, an analysis process in a laboratory, or some other type of automated instrumentation.

One of the objectives with the software in this book is that it be as platform-independent as possible. I am going to assume that you are comfortable with at least the Windows platform, and Windows XP in particular. With Linux Ill be referring to the Ubuntu distribution, but the discussion should apply to any recent Linux distribution and I will assume that you know how to use either the csh or bash command-line shells.

Since this is a book about interfacing to the real world via physical hardware, some electronics are involved, but I am not going to assume that you have an extensive background in electrical engineering. contains an overview of the basics of electronics theory as it relates to instrumentation, for those who might benefit from it. It turns out that it really doesnt take a deep level of electronics knowledge to successfully interface a computer with the physical world. But, as with anything else involving technology, it never hurts to know as much as possible, just on the off chance that things dont quite work out as expected the first time.

Regardless of the type of work you do, or where you do it, the main thing I am assuming that we have in common is a need to capture some data, and perhaps to generate control signals, and to do so through some kind of computer interface. Most importantly, we need the instrumentation and control software we create to be accurate, reliable, and relatively painless to implement.

The Programming Languages

The primary programming language we will use is Python, with a bit of C thrown in. Throughout the book, I will assume that you have some programming experience and are familiar with either Python or C (ideally, both). If that is not the case, experience with Perl or Tcl/Tk or analysis tools such as MatLab or IDL is also a reasonable starting point.

This book explicitly avoids the more esoteric aspects of the Python language, and the examples are profusely documented with comments in the code, diagrams, and screen captures where appropriate. The amount of C involved is minimal; it is used only to illustrate how to create and use low-level extensions for Python applications. provides a summary of the essentials of the C language. Some suggestions for further reading are also provided for those who wish to go deeper into either (or both) of these languages.

Why Python?

Python is an interpreted language developed by Guido van Rossum in the late 1980s. Because of its interpreted nature, there is no compilation step to deal with, and the user can create and execute programs directly from Pythons command line. The language itself is also easy to learn and comprehend, so long as one initially avoids the more advanced features (generators, introspection, list comprehension, and such). Thus, Python offers the dual benefits of rapid prototyping and ease of comprehension, which in turn allows for the quick creation of sophisticated tools for a diverse range of instrumentation applications, without the development burdens and learning curve normally associated with conventional compiled languages or a vendor-specific programming environment.

Python is highly portable, and it is available for almost every modern computing platform. So long as a project sticks to using commonly available interface methods, an application written initially on a PC running Windows will most likely work without change on a machine running Linux. The odds are good that the application will also run on a Sun Solaris machine or an Apple OS X system, although these systems are not specifically covered in this text. It is only when Python is used in conjunction with platform-specific extensions or drivers that it loses its portability, so in these cases I will offer alternatives for both Windows and Linux wherever feasible.

The text includes example code snippets, block diagrams and flow charts to illustrate key points, and some complete examples utilizing readily available and low-cost interface hardware.

The Systems

The types of instrumentation systems we will examine might be utilized for laboratory research, or they might be used in industrial settings. An instrumentation system might be used in an electronics lab, in a wind tunnel, or to collect meteorological data. The systems may be as simple as a temperature data logger or as complex as a thermal vacuum chamber control system.

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