Quickstart¶

Eager to get started? This page gives a good introduction to zhinst-labber. Follow Installation to install zhinst-labber first.

Preparation¶

Before using zhinst-labber, LabOne® needs to be installed and running. For a complete reference see the dedicated user manual page for your instrument(s).

Before continuing, make sure a LabOne® data server is running in your network and all of your devices are visible.

Generate Instrument driver¶

zhinst-labber does not include predefined Instrument drivers. Instead the command line can be used to generate a custom Instrument driver for all Zurich Instrument devices. This has the benefit that one does not need to pay any attention to the correct version or options.

The command line interface (CLI) can be accessed after zhinst-labber has been installed.

>>> zhinst-labber setup --help
Generate Zurich Instruments Labber drivers.
...

To generate a device driver the following information’s are needed (use --help to see all available options):

Output file path. (Instrument Server -> Edit -> Preferences -> Folders -> Local Drivers)
Device ID (e.g. DEV1234)
Server Host (e.g localhost)

>>> zhinst-labber setup "C:\Users\ZI\Labber\Drivers" DEV1234 localhost

Warning

Old drivers (< 0.3 ) for Zurich Instruments devices should be deleted before using the zhinst-labber CLI. Drivers already generated with the zhinst-labber CLI are not affected by this.

Note

If the driver should be generated for an HF2 device the option --hf2 must be used. (The reason is the different data server that the HF2 device uses for historically reasons)

Note

The generated driver is not bound to the used device but simply contains all the Quantities/Nodes that this device had at the time of the generation. This means the drivers can be used for other instruments, if it is of the same type, options and firmware revision.

Upgrade Instrument driver¶

Although it not mandatory it is recommended to upgrade the labber driver when the firmware of the device changes. The command is the same but the --upgrade options is required. Without this option the generator does not overwrite existing drivers.

>>> zhinst-labber setup "C:\Users\ZI\Labber\Drivers" DEV1234 localhost --upgrade

Note

After upgrading existing instrument drivers, the driver definition needs to be reloaded in Labber UI. The new drivers take place only after reload.

Configuring the Instrument driver¶

Besides the Zurich_Instruments_*.ini and Zurich_Instruments_*.py files the script generates also a settings.json. It offers the customization of the drivers. It is pre-filled with the information from the device used for generating the driver but can be customized if needed.

The settings.json has the following structure:

{
    "data_server": {
        "host": "localhost",
        "port": 8004,
        "hf2": false,
        "shared_session": true
    },
    "instrument": {
        "base_type": "device",
        "type": "UHFLI"
    }
    "logger_level": 20
    "logger_path": "Path\\to\\log\\output.log"
}

host: Used host server. Per default set to the server used during generation.
port: Used host port. Per default set to the server used during generation.
hf2: Flag if the used data_server is an HF2 data server. (automatically added by the generator if needed)
shared_session: If true the instrument reuses a session to a data server. Sharing a session is enabled by default and increases the setup speed as well as resource consumption.
logger_level: Used logger level. If not specified the default logger level (Info = 20) from zhinst-labber is used.
logger_path: Optional path for storing the logger output to a path. (In addition to the std::out)

Using the Instrument drivers¶

Once the drivers are generated they can be used within Labber. The following configuration should be used:

The Name is not used by the driver itself and can be chosen freely.
The Interface must be set to Other, regardless of the actual interface used for the device. The driver will automatically detect the correct interface. (As a fallback the LabOne GUI can be used to connect the data server to device via the correct interface)
The Address (if available) must be set to one of the following:
- For Devices and Modules: device id /serial of the used instrument (e.g. DEV1234).
- For the DataServer server_host:server_port (e.g. localhost:8004). The port is optional and can be ignored if the default port (8004 or 8005 for hf2) is used.

Same device, different options¶

If multiple devices of the same type are used and have different options, multiple different Labber drivers can be generated for each device.

The driver name structure is following:

Zurich_Instruments_<device name>_<option 1>_<option 2>_<option n>

Example use case¶

2 Zurich Instruments MFLI devices

MFLI without options

MFLI with DIG, and IA options

After generating the Labber drivers for both device, 2 drivers would exist:

Zurich_Instruments_MFLI

Zurich_Instruments_MFLI_DIG_IA

Now the correct driver can be used for whichever device is used.

Installation

Features