The main goal of slave is to make it easier to communicate with scientific instruments. Slave tries to ease the implementation of new instruments and comes with a variety of ready-to-use implementations.

A simple measurement script, using [pyvisa][] for the [GPIB][] connection, might look like

import time
import visa
from slave.sr830 import SR830

# construct and initialize a SR830 instrument with a GPIB connection on 
# channel 8.
lockin = SR830(visa.instrument('GPIB::08'))
lockin.reserve = 'high' # Set the dynamic reserve to `high`.
lockin.time_constant = 3 # Set the time constant to 3s.

# measure the x value 60 times and wait 1s between each measurement.
for i in range(60):
    print lockin.x
    time.sleep(1) # delay for 1s.

• Python 2.6 or higher
• Sphinx (optional, to build the documentation)
• distribute (Python 3.x)

To install Slave, simply type

python setup.py install

Note To install Slave in Python 3.x distribute is required.

Slave is fully documented. The latest stable documentation can be found here, the current development documentation here. To build the documentation manually, e.g. the html documentation, navigate into the /doc/ subfolder and execute make html.

You should have received a copy of the [GNU General Public License][] along with Slave; see the file COPYING. [GNU General Public License]: http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html [GPIB]: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEC-625-Bus [pyvisa]: http://pyvisa.sourceforge.net/