QCoDeS 0.2.1

Changelog for QCoDeS 0.2.1

This release fixes two small issues with execution of tests in 0.2.0 (#1540)

QCoDeS 0.2.0

This release contains large number of driver updates as well as significant improvements to the dataset and
documentation. It also introduces a new Parameter Class (ParameterWithSetpoints) that is intended to replace
ArrayParameter.

New & Improved

---

• New and Improved drivers:

  • Alazar cards:

    • Alazar 9870 Don't assign to instrument property (#1182)
    • Alazar add buffer completed callback (#1234)
    • updated/fixed ATS9870 driver (#1290)
    • Alazar remove AlazarParameter support (#1184)
    • Add firmware version to Alazar get_idn (#1308)
    • Add Alazar ATS9373 driver (#1324)
    • Add functions to read and write registers on Alazar and Trigger holdoff for 9360 (#1307)
    • Alazar add get/set parameter (#1523)
    • Alazar: refactor DLL API related things (#1471)

  • Lock-in amplifiers:

    • Fix maximum frequency for SRS860 - it is 500 kHz (#1164)
    • Standford Research SR860 lock-in amplifier driver improvements and bug fixes (#1160)
    • SR86x lockin: get values of many parameters at once (#1245)
    • SR830: Add increment/decrement sensitivity functions. (#1380)
    • driver / SR830 : add the snap XY command to read X and Y together (#1333)
    • Fix SR830's _change_sensitivity function. (#1411)
    • Feature/dem 805/implement sampling rate float parameter (#1510)
    • Feature/dem 804/implement missing uhfli commands (#1500)
    • Driver: ziuhfli - demod{}_harmonic now return int (#1534)

  • Magnets:

    • AMI430 driver setting set point despite being outside safe region (#1162)
    • Driver/Mercury iPS with VISA (#897)
    • driver / add block_during_ramp parameter to AMI430_3D (#1228)
    • Fix / driver / mercury ips / firmware 2.6 (#1385)
    • Homogeneous coordinates for field vectors in Mercury iPS (#1398)
    • Add simultaneous blocking ramp parameters MercuryIPS (#1467)
    • Various IPS120 driver improvements (#1402)
    • Field Vectors attributes should only be floats (#1458)

  • Multi Meters:

    • Keithley 2400 protect read commands (#1171)
    • Refactor Keysight 344xxA code and small fixes (#1169)
    • Fix keithley 2600 formatting (#1301)
    • add driver for keithley6500 (#1233)
    • Driver: Keysight 344xxA - flexible measurements and modularization (#1433)
    • adds a very basic pyvisa-sim yaml for the Keithley 2600 (#1465)
    • Driver/gentec maestro (#1507)

  • Oscilloscopes:

    • Driver/infiniium additional parameters (#1203)
    • Set minimum version of firmware for Rigol DS4000 (#1206)
    • Extend RTO1000 driver (#1410)

  • Signal and Waveform generators:

    • Added support for N5183B Signal Generator (#1153, #1155)
    • Refactor awg file handling in awg5014 driver (#1066)
    • Rigol dg1062 (#1082)
    • Hotfix/awg70000 makeseqxfile (#1213)
    • AWG5208: Consider wait for trigger equivalent to running in wait for trigger (#1283)
    • fix: N52xx various fixes (#1299)
    • Use log instead of print in AWG70000A driver (#1390)
    • Driver/awg5014 upload lomentum sequence (#1381)
    • Feature/keysight 33xx pulsewidth (#1405)
    • Feature/dem 564/driver for zi hdawg8 (#1331)
    • feat: add specs for model '33512B' in KeysightAgilent_33XXX (#1422)
    • Remove deprecated keysight waveform drivers drivers (#1435)
    • Feature/rigol dg1062/adding duty cycle parameter (#1456)
    • [DEM-831] Compiler warnings in ZIHDAWG8 should be logged or raised. (#1522)

  • Spectrum and Vector Network Analyzers:

    • Driver / signalhound use standard logging (#1154)
    • driver/Keysight N5245A (#807)
    • Remove unused function in N52xx driver (#1219)
    • Spectrum analyser update (#1248)
    • Signal hound a few more changes (#1318)
    • Znb read from existing channels (#1111)

  • Temperature controllers:

    • Driver/lakeshore336 and lakeshore 372 (#972)
    • Extension/lakeshore read curve file (#1421)
    • Lakeshore Model 336: make runnable, add minimal test, and fixes along the way (#1526)

  • Others:

    • Change loglevel for send/recv in IPInstrument (#1146)
    • M4i: bugfix spectrum digitizer driver (#1145)
    • Add set_parameter_bounds to IVVI.py (#1128)
    • Reorder initialization of IVVI (#1212)
    • Add new driver for Newport AG-UC8 (#1230)
    • IVVI add missing underscore in parameter name (#1246)
    • Fix decadac docstring (#1282)
    • Remove all remaining uses of get/set in instrument drivers (#1325)
    • Update CryogenicSMS driver (#1346)
    • MiniCircuits: wrong USB packet size resulting in error on Windows 7 (#1366)
    • Minicircuits USB_SPDT catch the correct error (#1376)
    • add M2j driver (#1188)
    • Feature/dem 613/update s5i driver (#1392)
    • Driver dev/switch matrix (#1373)
    • Driver / DynaCool PPMS (#1218)
    • Driver/stahl (#1390)
    • Driver/keithley s46 (#1409)
    • Added driver for Basel current preamplifier. (#1327)
    • add option for pretrigger memsize to channel readout (#1461)
    • Dev/b2200 switch matrix multiple channel connect (#1480)
    • Add boxcar average option to M4i driver (#1509)
    • fix bug in averaging of m4i blockavg (#1528)

• Other changes:

  • Config:

    • allow config to update based on specified path (#1226)
    • Config cleanup (#1242)
    • Bugfix: fix repr of Config (#1403)

  • Dataset:

    • Add some minor DataSet conveniences (#1211)
    • Make data saver accept numpy type floats/ints (#1225)
    • Dataset Context manager. Allow insertion of Data direcly as arrays (#1207)
    • Fix requirements of ordering of setpoints as dependencies (#1250)
    • Dataset support multiparameter (#1249)
    • String-valued parameters support (#1248)
    • Ensure that post actions are performed in some context managers (#1289)
    • Enhance run table query performance with indices (#1277)
    • DataSaver.add_result 'array' before 'numeric' now works (#1306)
    • Refactor / dataset init method (#1323, #1332)
    • Feature: access snapshot of a DataSet, and docs (also, Station bug fix + tests) (#1322)
    • Meaningful exception when loading/creating dataset for non-existing run id (#1328)
    • Fix JSON-dumping of snapshots with numpy-typed values (and other) (#1328)
    • qcodes.dataset.* fool-proofing and minor fixes (#1334)
    • Development/dependencies dsl (#1227)
    • Add Subscribers from config (#1365)
    • Improvement / dataset metadata (#1382)
    • DataSet.get_data bugs with start/end arguments (#1386)
    • Add function to fix wrong descriptions (#1396)
    • Feature / let database show version without upgrading (#1395)
    • Fix bug where atomic and ConnectionPlus might not commit to database (+ fix DataSet.unsubscribe) (+ deprecate DataSet modify_results, modify_result, add_parameter_values) (#1389)
    • Feature / database extract runs (#1397)
    • Add get_parameter_data aka get_columns (#1400)
    • Ensure that partial run creation is completly rolled back (#1445)
    • Hashable and Immutable ParamSpec (#1367)
    • Don't allow connection to db that is newer than the one we support (#1454)
    • Dataset: Fixed issue with legacy import (#1459)
    • Add Pandas exporter to dataset (#1423, #1508)
    • Fix issues with infered_from and add checks for infered_from and depends_on that are strings (#1453)
    • Document exporting of data from dataset (#1462)
    • Feature: give DataSet an explicit start method (#1482, #1486)
    • Rename mark_complete to mark_completed (#1495)
    • Cast array params to np array before inserting (#1497)
    • Remove redundant reshape (#1499)
    • fix: Handle 'inf' in _convert_numeric (#1449)
    • Dataset: Fix/do not retrive nulls (#1512)
    • Update Offline Plotting Tutorial with kwargs examples (#1516)

  • Documentation:

    • Build and execute notebooks with nbsphinx (#1330)
    • Documentation improvements (#1349, #1358, #1362, , #1436, #1479, #1485, #1478, #1514, #1515, #1518, #1517)

  • Instruments and Parameters:

    • Add option to remove channels from ChannelList (#1045)
    • Fix validation of steps (#1176)
    • Add paramterScaler with an usage example (#1069)
    • Bug: snapshot fails when instantiating InstrumentBase (#1209)
    • Find or create an instrument without worrying about existing instances (#1210)
    • GroupParameter and Group (for visa commands that set/get more than one parameter at once) (#1232, #1266)
    • Make Array validators shape optionally callable (#1312)
    • Ensure Parameter name is an identifer (#1326)
    • Don't use deprecated add_parameters in tests (#1343)
    • Snapshot diff and method chaining (#1363)
    • Bugfix: removing a channel instance that was added with extend (#1368)
    • Discourage the use of QCoDeS functions (#1378)
    • Extension/dynamic module (#1353)
    • Fix unclarity about post_delay/inter_delay of Parameter, remove deprecated get/set delay and get/set step (#1387)
    • Use getattr to get ask/write from instruments (#1451)
    • New Parameter Class ParameterWithSetpoints (#1263)
    • val_mapping creator function to solve on/off/true/false issue (#1413, #1502)
    • Add origin to parameter warnings (#1481)

  • Legacy dataset:

    • fix read and write of NaN to hdf5, issue (#1180)
    • add flush option to hdf5 write_metadata (#1455)

  • Logging:

    • Log the instrument that a failed parameter update comes from (#1173)
    • Feat / logfile analysis (#1093)
    • logging module (#1309, #1364)

  • Plotting:

    • Feature / add label to plot_by_id (#1235)
    • Feature / rescale ticks and units in plot_by_id (#1239)
    • Smart color scale (#1253, #1255, #1259, #1294)
    • Format ticks for non-SI-unit axis in a more readable way (#1243)
    • plot_by_id: pass kwargs to subplots and plot function (#1258)
    • Fix potential divide_by_zero warning in scale selection (#1261)
    • Plot_by_id rasterise 2d plots for large datasets ...

Fix of corrupt file in v0.1.10

Changelog for QCoDeS 0.1.11

This release fixes a corrupt file in release 0.1.10

Dataset beta release

Changelog for QCoDeS 0.1.10

This release drops support for python 3.5- and introduces the new dataset in a beta version.

New & Improved

---

• New and Improved drivers:

  • New Tektronix AWG5208 driver (#977)
  • New Alazar ATS9360 driver (#860)
  • Triton driver: magnet control added (#893)
  • QDac driver: kwargs now correctly forwarded (#962)
  • Decadac driver: minor fix (#964)
  • Rohde&Schwarz ZNB driver: code cleaned up (#887)
  • Spectrum Mi4 driver: awg function improved (#970)
  • Keithley driver: resistance added (#974)
  • SR860 driver: better snapshot (#1013)

• New features:

  • A brand new SQLite based dataset! (#664)
  • Monitor improvements (#986, #1018)

• Documentation improvements:

  • The new dataset is sort of documented (#992)

• News for devs:

  • Mypy checking of the codebase (#824)

Breaking Changes

---

• The new dataset does not use the Loop. A whole new API is offered for performing measurements.

Last pre-DataSet release

Changelog for QCoDeS 0.1.9

This release changes the API of Parameters in QCoDeS, reducing the amount of Parameter classes. It also introduces tests for VisaInstrument drivers via the PyVISA-sim backend.

Note: This is the last QCoDeS release before the new dataset and as such it will be the last QCoDeS release to support python 3.5.

New & Improved

---

• New and Improved drivers:

  • New driver for HP8753D Spectrum Analyzer (#843)
  • Fixes to Decadac driver (#756, #838, #857, #876)
  • Unification of existing Keysight waveform generator drivers (#758)
  • New driver for Keysight Infiniium MSOS104A oscilloscope (#766)
  • New driver for Keysight N51x1 RF source (#796)
  • New driver for Keysight E8267D (#892)
  • New driver for Mini-Circuits RF switch USB-4SPDT-A18 (#891)
  • New driver for Mini-Circuits RF switch RC-xSP4T (#814)
  • New driver for Mini-Circuits RF switch RC-1SP4T (#814)
  • New driver for Mini-Circuits RF switch USB-4SPDT (#814)
  • New driver for Spirack module (#847)
  • Fixes to IVVI (#919)
  • Features added to ZI UHF-LI driver (#883, #879, #870, #685)
  • New driver for Cryogenic SMS120c (#819)
  • New driver for Rohde & Schwarz RTO 1000 oscilloscope (#679, #907)
  • New drivers for Stanford Research Instruments lock-in amplifiers SR860 and SR865
  • New driver for Tektronix AWG70000A series (#761, #911)
  • New fast sweep feature for and channelisation of Tektronix Keithley 2600 (#747)
  • New driver for Yokogawa GS200

• New features:

  • Simulated instruments using PyVISA-sim for driver testing (#859)
  • New Parameter API (#651)

• Documentation improvements:

  • MatPlot Guide (#762)
  • Obsolete examples removed (#918)
  • New and easier installation instructions (#841)

Breaking Changes

---

• The Parameter API changed. There are no longer StandardParameters and ManualParameters can be avoided.

September release

Changelog for QCoDeS 0.1.7

New & Improved

• New and Improved drivers:

  • Fixes to DecaDac driver (#713)
  • Driver for Oxford Kelvinox (#707)
  • Driver for Oxford ILM 200 Helium Level Meter (#706)
  • IPS120 Magnet driver (#660)
  • New AMI430 driver (#700)
  • Driver for tektronics awg5200 (#724)
  • Benchmark Keysight DMM software trigger (#729)
  • Faster qdac (#730, #737)
  • Ivvi triggers (#739)

• Features:

  • Improved PyQtGraph performance (#712)
  • Improve default_parameter_name (#714)
  • Function to Close all instruments (#715)
  • Automatic Foreground qt window (#716) Requires pywin32 on windows not
    installed by default
  • Handle snapshot update failing better (#717)
  • Cleanup dependencies for easier install (#721)
  • Update Slack contact information (#727)

Small changes

Changelog for QCoDeS 0.1.6

New & Improved

• Improved drivers:

  • M4i improvements (#672, #692)
  • Improved R&S ZNB8/20 driver with channels and support for many more parameters (#643, #682, #710)
  • Speedup qdac snapshot (#686, #690)
  • Keysight 34465A DMM, fix error without DIG option (#697)

• Features:

  • Slack bot improvements (#671, #675, #681)
  • Correct issue with storing data from combined measurement (#670)
  • Also support numpy boolean type in validator (#676)
  • Remove notebook detection and replace toplevel plotting lib import by config (#699)
  • add increment function to parameter (#677)
  • IVVI add function to round float to dac resolution (#695)

Now with Channels

Changelog for QCoDeS 0.1.5

New & Improved

• Improved drivers:

  • Voltage Divider takes an instrument (#644)
  • Stanford Research SR830 buffered readout (#653)
  • Keightley 2000 fix readout for old firmware (#635)
  • Tektronix AWG5014 improved performance (#656)
  • Improved Decadac driver with channels (#640)
  • Improved QDac with channels
  • Improved TPS driver with channels (#642)
  • Imprroved Keysight 33500 driver with channels (#665)

• Features:

  • Slack bot (#427, #646)
  • Support for instrument channels (#640, #641)
  • Validator for callables (#650)
  • Validator for dicts (#657)
  • Improved MatPlot (#636)
  • InstrumentRefParameter (#649)
  • PyQtGraph fix to keep plots open (#662)

Multiprocessing gone

Changelog for QCoDeS 0.1.4

Breaking Changes

• Multiprocessing removed (#510)

New & Improved

• Devices:

  • Voltage Divider: (#492)

• New Drivers:

  • Keithley 2400 Sourcemeter (#488)
  • HP 83650A Synthesized Sweeper (#516)
  • HP 8133A Pulse Generator (#581)
  • ZI UFH-LI (#466)
  • Keysight 33500B Waveform Generator (#535)
  • Keysight 34465A Digital Multimeter (#556)
  • Alazar (#491)
  • AMI430 Magnet power supply (#255)
  • Keysight M3300A card (#575)
  • Cryo-con temperature controller (#462)
  • SRS SIM928 (#566)
  • Advantech PCIE-1751 (#566)
  • Tektronix TPS 2012 (#603)
  • Agilent E8267C Signal Generator (#597)

• Improved drivers:

  • QDAC (#554, #557, #558)
  • Spectrum M4i (#544)
  • Mercury iPS (#460, #573, #585)
  • Oxford Triton (#576, #589, #587)
  • IVVI (#541, #553, #529)

• Features:

  • List validators (#542)
  • Example notebooks are now build as part of the documentation (#569)
  • Hdf5 formatter with JSON metadata (#445)

Fixed

• Setpoint units
• Setpoints for Multiparameter

New parameter ⛑

Changelog for QCoDeS 0.1.3

Breaking Changes

• New and slightly improved parameter (#403)
• Units is deprecated (with a warning and a redirect to unit)

New & Improved

• Human readable snapshot
• Drivers:
  • add yokogawa gs200 (#393)
  • add SG384 (#318)
  • new awg5014 driver
  • add Spectrum M4i.44xx-x8 driver
• Automatic build / test system

Fixed

• fix Keithely 2600 precision
• Cosmetic issues