Welcome to PyGMI ! What is PyGMI ?
PyGMI is an open source Generic Measurements Interface made in Python/Qt that can take measurements with instruments connected over GPIB, RS232, ethernet or USB using Pyvisa and PySerial. It features:
• live display of the data acquired using pyqtgraph
• a macro editor that can make a series of mesurements and even send e-mails with data! 
• generic instruments panels, that can easily be created for a class of instruments using using the WYSIWYG interface designer QtDesigner
• a graphical interface that can also be easily modified using QtDesigner
• a main configuration panel that can store instruments types and instruments addresses for easy reconfiguration from one experiment to the next
• measurements that are taken in a separate process so that they do not burden the graphical interface
• generic python drivers can easily be created for new instruments
Its philosophy is that acquiring data with instruments, displaying it live and saving these data is a very generic thing, whereas the core of an experiment is: what instruments do what and in which order. Therefore, PyGMI provides a framework that relieves the user from doing all those generic tasks, so that taking measurements become as simple as writing “what instruments do what and in which order” such as :

currentsource.set_current_amplitude(+I)
Vp=voltmeter.query_voltage()
currentsource.set_current_amplitude(-I)
Vm=voltmeter.query_voltage()

Check out the documentation for more details !

2018/08/15
- New branch working with python 3.6 and Qt5
(-->a few helper scripts in the root folder may help with your own legacy scripts for previous versions of PyGMI)
- Work from Spyder Ipython console
- Independent instrument panel windows (top windows, not restrained to tab)
- All required packages should be installable from conda except for pyvisa and pyserial (for which you can use pip)

Also:
- changed syntax of data queue in the measurements programs:
it now accepts:
    self.data_queue.put(('some comments','comment'))
and:
    self.data_queue.put((last_data,False))
needs to be replaced by:
    self.data_queue.put((last_data,'data'))

->a few details about switch to Python 3
- use importlib.import_module and importlib.reload for the programmatic import of
measurements scripts, which removed all the "exec", and left only one "eval"
in Main.py
- fixed "print" statement and relative import
- fixed ".encode('utf-8')" of unicode string
- fixed "encoding=" option of str()
- fixed Measurements_programs catching "__pycache__"
- fixed problem with relative imports and compileUI: need to prepend a '.' in the name of the headerfile in the .ui when promoting a widget
- fixed a few other bugs

2017/01/09 
v3-beta was promoted to Master branch and was designed for use with PyQt4 and Qt4.8, and Python 2.7
It should work with Anaconda/Spyder provided that you download one of the previous versions of Anaconda, as the most recent appears to ship with Qt5

The previous Master branch was reverted to its original version and renamed "PySide branch" as it was found that some updates ended up introducing PyQt, thus mixing PySide and PyQt in the same program, and causing various bugs.

2016/09/18 Major update
Master branch was designed for the latest version of Python 2 and uses PySide
New beta release (branch "v3-beta") was adapted to work with PyQt and so it should now work with Spyder (in the spyder console subwindow, select using the "console" tab, not the "IPython console" tab)

v3-beta updates:
-switched to PyQt and Spyder
-adapted to Pyvisa >1.5 (rough patch provided in main folder to update old instruments drivers)
-include a new ppms driver and Macro commands to control the ppms. But to get this feature to work you need to download the "QDInstrument.dll" from the Pharos website of Quantum Design and place it in the folder : PyGMI_files\Instruments\MyPPMSDLL\data

NB0: This program works with Qt4.8 and not the newest Qt5. It appears that the latest Anaconda releases now ship with Qt5 instead of Qt4.8, so it will not work out-of-the-box with Anaconda anymore, you will need to look for the Qt4.8 version in the download archives of Anaconda.

NB: The PPMS driver will probably work only with Spyder/Python/etc.. all in 32-bit version and on windows (there are DLL involved). You're welcome to fork it, if you can make it work on other platforms.

NB2: To get the PPMS driver to work, you also need to have MultiVu running on the same computer (the PPMS driver/DLL apparently uses an OLE connection in the background to talk to MultiVu, which itself talks to the PPMS), but it appears that MultiVu fails/shuts down after almost exactly 2**15=32,768 commands have been sent to it through the PPMS driver (which comes surprisingly quickly at 1 datapoint per second). So the PPMS commands in the python driver ("PPMS.py") have been wrapped with a decorator that checks if the commands completed correctly, and if not it checks if MultiVu is still running and restarts it if necessary (assuming that MultiVu is in the default directory "C:\QdPpms\MultiVu\PpmsMVu.exe", but this can be modified in PPMS.py).