0.2.0.rst

Changelog for 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 (1305)
    • Feature: plot_by_id string-valued data for 2D plots (1311)
    • Fix / plot by id cmap kwar (1427)
  • Other:
    • Setup benchmarking and add simple dataset benchmark (1202)
    • Set up CI with Azure Pipelines (1292, 1293, 1300)
    • Catch generic exceptions in import of dependencies. (1316)
    • Test with python 3.7 on travis (1321)
    • Adapt workaround for spyder UMR to work with newest version of spyder (1338)
    • Monitor: Support for new versions of Websocket (1407, 1420)
    • Make error_caused_by more robust (1532)