KLCserial 0.26

Functions and examples to control Thorlabs KLC controllers (KLC101) through serial commands with Python

KLCserial

Functions and examples to control Thorlabs KLC controllers (KLC101) through serial commands with Python.

The official software can be found on the Supplier Download Site. Documentation is also available through the same website. The serial commands have been partially assembled from the Thorlabs Motion Controllers Host-Controller Communications Protocol.

There is no specific documentation for the KLC101 so I assembled commands from other stages.

Requirements

Needs serial and pyserial (both of them are needed for this to work somehow), best installed through:

pip install serial pyserial

Usage

Simply run

pip install KLCserial

Then in your Python script invoke the functions by

from KLCserial import KLC
klc = KLC()

With klc you can then call all functions and methods of the controllers.

Look at example.py. There are a few more commands implemented than shown in the example but they appear not to be too helpful for most applications.

Serial ports

By default the openKLC()-function will use all the ports found under /dev/serial/by-id/*Kinesis_LC_Controller* (Windows: COM[0-255], not tested) and try to connect through serial.

You need write-access to the tty-port. Either run as the admin or change the permissions or the ownership on the serial port, preferably with a udev rule, e.g. something like /etc/udev/rules.d/80-usb-serial.rules

SUBSYSTEM=="tty", MODE="0666"

(After changing run as root: udevadm control --reload-rules && udevadm trigger)

License

This project is licensed under the Apache-2.0 license. Copyright 2025 iancynk

Acknowledgement

You're welcome!

Comments and suggestions highly welcome.