Shortcuts to FluidLab Instrument classes

The instrument classes are the basic objects that we use to communicate with various scientific instruments. They are implemented in the FluidLab project in the fluidlab.instruments module.

The pymanip.instruments module, along with the list_instruments cli command are simple tools, designed to simplify access to these classes.

Indeed, each instrument class in FluidLab is defined in separate sub-modules, which can result in long and convoluted import statements, such as

from fluidlab.instruments.chiller.lauda import Lauda
from fluidlab.instruments.multiplexer.agilent_34970a import Agilent34970a
from fluidlab.instruments.motor_controller.newport_xps_rl import NewportXpsRL

The pymanip.instruments module simplifies these import statements and allows to write

from pymanip.instruments import Lauda, Agilent34970a, NewportXpsRL

This is of course less efficient because this means that all instruments classes are actually loaded, but it makes the script easier to write and read.

The names of the available instrument classes can be conveniently obtained from the command line

$ python -m pymanip list_instruments