Feb 23, 2015

Rick Eis
stylonurus@yahoo.com

Python / VISA Development Steps for W7

This document was published in December 2014. and updated in January 2015.
Please note that there may be newer versions of the .msi and .exe installation programs listed below.
This document intends to serve as a help guide to set up a system for Python Development on a Windows 7 machine

An underlining theme that permeates throughout this document is the overall goal of monitoring test equipment such as oscilloscopes, temperature chambers etc using National Instuments VISA
command language.
Currently there are four parts to this document
Part 1 describes the installation of Python and the steps to convert a python GUI created in QT to a python file.
Part 2 describes the process of installing the libraries necessary to interface with National Instruments VISA protocol.
Part 3 describes how to set up matrplotlib; a third party plotter which has the ability to display waveforms as well as other graphical
content as seen on the Oscilloscope display.

Part 4 explains how to convert a python project into an executable using the cx_Freeze library
Part 5 illustrates how to add an Icon as a resource file to Qt

Part 1
There are several different development configurations for running Python. This document describes the one which appears to be the most
preferred by developers at the time of this writing. (well as far as I could gather..) This document will go over theinstallation of this configuration in this first section.
The installations for this configuration (see table below) can easily be found on the web but I have also copied them to U:\eisric\Python\Py 3.4.0
First; Install Python3.4 , then the other three can be installed in any order.
Python is a programming language and Python 3.4 is one of the latest versions. To begin developing Python application, install Python 3.4
PySide is an add-on that is used with PyQt or Qt
PyQt is a Graphical User Interface development environment. The .ui file it creates can be converted to a .py as is shown later in this document.

Python3.4

Python

python-3.4.0.amd64.msi

Python 3.4 PySide-1.2.2(64 bit)

Support for Qt

PySide-1.2.2.win-amd64-py3.4.exe

PyQt GPL v4.11.2 for Python 3.4 (x64) Qt is a GUI development environment for Python

PyQt4-4.11.2-gpl-Py3.4-Qt4.8.6-x64.exe

Pycharm-community-3.4.1.exe

pycharm-community-3.4.1.exe

Nice (optional) IDE for Python development

For Windows machines make sure your environment path contains the following .
C:\Python34;
C:\Python34\Scripts;
C:\Python34\Lib\site-packages\PyQt4;
To do this you will need to update the PATH in your environment variables which can be found under advanced system settings. Make sure you reboot your computer after making the change.
After all installations are complete, Create a temporary directory where files for the following example in this document can be saved
then
follow the steps below to
1. Create a gui in Qt
2. Convert it to a .py
3. Edit it in PyCharm and then build the application and run it.

1. Open the Qt designer and Create a Main Window

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2. Using controls from the Widget Box, drag any controls for this example over to working area
3. Save the file and name it window.ui for this example and save it to the directory you ceated above
4. Now follow these steps to convert the window.ui file into wiindowGUI .py using the PySide utility
program called pyside-uic
a. Open up a cmd window (any windows system32 or Visual Studio Command Prompt is fine)
b. Navigate to project directory where window.ui resides
c. Make sure that the path to C:\Python34\Scripts|pyside.uic is current or type it out (explicitly)
followed by the output file.

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5. In this example the output file is called windowGUI.py and the project directory is C: \PythonExample
6. Run this from the command line: "pyside-uic window.ui -o windowGUI.py" as shown above
7. At this point we have converted the window.ui into windowGUI.py and need to create a new py file to
import the code from the windowGUI.py file. We cannot edit the windowGUI.py since any future GUI
changes would lose any updates when we re-ran pyside-uic command. Instead we create another .py file
to handle the code behind logic of the GUI. We'll call this file integrator .py for lack of a better name.
8. So, open up the IDE called pyCharm and create a new project as shown below. Make sure the location is
set to the same directory as above and use the default project name, then click OK.

If a different project name is given that is other than the default location, a new sub -directory will be
created to hole the project files.
9. Click Yes to create a project from the existing sources (these are the files we just created: window.ui and
windowGUI.py)

10. Open the project in a new window (This may not be an option on a new project when run the first (initial)
time.

11. If the project window is not displayed, select it

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12. Right click on directory name and create a new python file; Integrator

13. Add the following code to Integrator.py:

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------from PySide.QtCore import *
from PySide.QtGui import *
import sys
import windowGui
class MainW(QMainWindow, windowGui.Ui_MainWindow):
def __init__(self, parent=None):
super(MainW, self).__init__(parent)
self.setupUi(self)
app = QApplication(sys.argv)
form = MainW()
form.show()
app.exec_()
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

14. Finished . Now run the code

Part 2
Procedure to install libraries for VISA interface via Python

These installations can easily be found on the web but I also have copied them to U:\eisric\Python\Py
3.4.0
Python Visa Interface to NI's VISA library

pyvisa

PyWin32

PyWin32 provides bindings for the Win32 API

functions

pywin32-219.win-amd64py3.4.exe

VISA

National Instruments VISA library

NIVISA541full_downloader.exe

pip

installs packages; an easy install replacement.

Installed with Python 3.4

1. Install pyVisa which is the Python interface to National Instruments VISA library
Open up a command window and run the following

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2. Next install pywin32-219.win-amd64-py3.4.exe

PyWin32 provides bindings for the Win32 API functions for which there are many,
So for example you can use win32 API calls from your python program

3. Run NIVISA541full_downloader.exe to install VISA library

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( win32file.CopyFileEx(...)

4. Next attach a device (USB - GPIB) and run the following python script
import visa
rm = visa.ResourceManager()
print (rm.list_resources())
And you should receive an output similar to.. But if instead there is no GPIB device listed
you will need to load the National Instruments USB-GPIB driver ; NI4882_140_downloader.exe
which also can be found at U:\eisric\Python\Py 3.4.0\NI USB-GPIB Driver For W7

Part 3
Procedure to install matplotlib.
These binaries used for running Python on Windows can also be found at U:\eisric\Python\Py 3.4.0\Matplotlib

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These binaries used for running Python on Windows can also be found at U:\eisric\Python\Py 3.4.0\Matplotlib
After installing matplotlib, install the other binaries or Python libraries which matplotlib requires
MatPlotLib a 2D plotting library

matplotlib-1.4.2.win-amd64-py3.4.exe

Numpy

a fundamental package needed for scientific computing with Python

numpy-MKL-1.9.1.win-amd64-py3.4.exe

Pillow

is a replacement for PIL, the Python Image Library, which provides image processing functionality and
supports many file formats.

Pillow-2.6.1.win-amd64-py3.4.exe

PyParsing

creates and executes simple grammars

pyparsing-2.0.3.win-amd64-py3.4.exe

DateUtil

extends the standard datetime module.

python-dateutil-2.3.win-amd64-py3.4.exe

Pytz

provides world time zone definitions, modern and historical.

pytz-2014.10.win-amd64-py3.4.exe

Setuptools downloads, builds, installs, upgrades, and uninstalls Python packages.

setuptools-5.8.win-amd64-py3.4.exe

Six

six-1.8.0.win-amd64-py3.4.exe

is a Python 2 and 3 compatibility library.

First, display a waveform on channel 2 and then

Run the following code to display the waveform

import visa
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import matplotlib.animation as animation

def animate(i):
yInt = []
global ax1
tdsData = inst.query_binary_values('CURVe?', datatype='b', is_big_endian=True)
for currentY in tdsData:
yInt.append(currentY)
ax1.clear()
ax1.tick_params(axis='x', colors='b')
ax1.tick_params(axis='y', colors='b')
ax1.spines['bottom'].set_color('b')
ax1.spines['top'].set_color('b')
ax1.spines['left'].set_color('b')
ax1.spines['right'].set_color('b')
ax1.xaxis.label.set_color('b')
ax1.yaxis.label.set_color('b')
ax1.set_title("TDS 3054", color='b')

ax1.set_autoscaley_on(False)
ax1.set_ylim([-100, 100])
plt.ylabel('value')
plt.xlabel('points')
rect.set_facecolor('w')
ax1.plot(yInt, 'c', linewidth=3)

fig = plt.figure()
rect = fig.patch
ax1 = fig.add_subplot(1,1,1, axisbg='black')
rm = visa.ResourceManager()
inst = rm.open_resource('GPIB0::10::INSTR')
inst.write('DATa:SOUrce CH2')
inst.write('DATa:ENCdg RIBinary')
inst.write('DATa:WIDth 1')
inst.write('DATA:START 1')
inst.write('DATA:STOP 10000')
ani = animation.FuncAnimation(fig, animate, interval=100)
plt.show()

Part 4
Procedure to convert a python project into an executable.

First, install this binary which peforms the conversio. The file can be downloaded from the web but can
also be found at U:\eisric\Python\Py 3.4.0\cx_Freeze
Cx_Freeze

a executable conversion utility python files

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cx_Freeze-4.3.3.win-amd64-py3.4.exe

Note: The source code that follows works with the example code that I have used for this evaluation.
Different projects may encounter problems and the reader may want to access the cx_freeze
documentation directly to solve problems as there is not a lot of information currently on the web.
http://cx-freeze.readthedocs.org/en/latest/
Process:
In the directory where the project resides, create a new python file which will have instructions for the
cx_Freeze utility as it performs the conversion. In this example the name for the file will be setup.py
setup.py contains the following code

import cx_Freeze
import sys
import matplotlib

Optional, cx_freeze can usually solve project dependencies

base = None

Name of main file in python project

if sys.platform == 'win32':
base = "Win32GUI"

This icon statement is optional. The result of this statement attaches

an icon to the exe file in the windows directory

executables = [cx_Freeze.Executable("mainTds.py", base=base, icon="VISA.ICO")]

cx_Freeze.setup(
name='tds',
options = {"build_exe": {"packages":["tkinter","matplotlib"], "include_files":["VISA.ICO"]}},
version = "0.01",
description = "Instruction to create TDS3054 exe",
executables = executables
)

To build the executable, run the following in a command window from the project directory

A successful build will yield a subdirectory in the project folder called build

With the converted executable

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This icon file reference is used for the icon which is used in the
application. (Also optional if no icon is beign used)

Part 5 - Adding an Icon as a resource file to Qt

The main python windows Icon files can be embedded in the application by using this process.
In Qt click on the windowIcon down error of the MainWindow and Choose
Resource

Then click on the pencil

To bring up the Edit Resource dialog box

Click on the Add Prefix button (5th from left) and name the new prefix ( / )

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Then click on the Add file icon (4th rom left) and select the file(s) to add. In this example I am adding the
VISA.ICO icon file to the resource file I named icons.qrc

Select the VISA.ICO file and click on OK

The VISA.ICO will be selected for the window icon

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The last step uses the pyside rrc utility to convert the resource file into a python file and then convert
the GUI (.ui) into a python file as shown below

The application can now be run

Side Note:
Because the icon is embedded, it is no longer necessary to reference it in the setup file
when creating an executable as shown below. (see above

Still, the following modification will attach an Icon into the executable file listing but the icon file must
then be re added to the local directory as the setup build process cannot access the icon in the resource
file.

VISA.ICO references removed

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VISA.ICO references removed

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