keysight

keysight is a Python 3.12+ package providing modules and helpers to work with data files saved by Keysight Technologies (formerly Agilent/HP) test equipment. Every instrument writes a different header, so each one gets a module of its own, and each module exposes read_csv_file() returning the header fields as a dict alongside the trace data as a numpy structured array.

Installation

You can install keysight either via the Python Package Index (PyPI) or from source.

To add it to a project managed with uv, which records it in your pyproject.toml and lock file:

$ uv add keysight

Or to install it with pip:

$ pip install keysight

Source: https://github.com/questrail/keysight

Supported Keysight Equipment

Spectrum Analyzers and EMI Receivers

Below are the modules available in the keysight package and the compatible equipment for each module:

• n9340: N9340, N9340B spectrum analyzers
• n9038: N9038A MXE EMI test receiver
• e4411b: E4411B, E4402B spectrum analyzers

Usage

from keysight import n9340

header, data = n9340.read_csv_file("RET1AMB.CSV")

header["start_freq"]  # 100000.0
header["trace_unit"]  # 'dBm'
data["frequency"][0]  # 100000.0
data["amplitude_db"][0]  # -47.25

The n9038 and e4411b readers name their amplitude field amplitude rather than amplitude_db, since those instruments record the unit in the header instead. Both handle any number of traces: the amplitude field is scalar for a single trace file and holds one value per trace otherwise.

from keysight import n9038

header, data = n9038.read_csv_file("N9038A_AllTraces.csv")

header["num_traces"]  # 6
data["amplitude"].shape  # (1001, 6)
data["amplitude"][0][1]  # the second trace at the first frequency

Dependencies

See the pyproject.toml and uv.lock files for the dependency requirements.

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! To contribute please:

1. Fork the repository
2. Create a feature branch
3. Add code and tests
4. Pass lint and tests
5. Submit a pull request

Sample CSV and other data files

The sample files under tests/sample_data are what the test suite reads, and they are the only files anything here has been checked against. If you have data files saved from a Keysight/Agilent/HP piece of test equipment that this package does not yet handle, and are willing to share them, please open an issue or submit a pull request.

Development Setup

Development Setup Using uv

Development Setup on macOS

$ brew install uv just

With uv and Just installed, development has been simplified to simply running Just to see the available commands.

$ just

ruff and pyright are deliberately absent from that line. Both are dev dependencies pinned in uv.lock and reached through uv run, so every recipe and every CI job uses the same version. A brew install ruff would put a second, unpinned copy on the path for an editor to find, and ruff releases change how code is formatted: the editor would then reformat code that ruff format --check rejects on the next run.

Releasing to PyPI

just release cuts the release. It first checks that a release is possible at all, then lints, type checks, and tests, then shows the entries waiting under Unreleased and the version each kind of bump would produce, and asks which to cut. Once answered it bumps the version, closes out the CHANGELOG, updates the lock file, commits, and tags. Pushing the tag is what publishes.

$ just release

Releasing from 1.5.0, with these entries under Unreleased:

    ### Fixed

    - A file naming an unexpected number of traces returned the spent CSV
      reader in place of an array.

    1) patch   1.5.0 -> 1.5.1
    2) minor   1.5.0 -> 1.6.0
    3) major   1.5.0 -> 2.0.0
    q) cancel

Which release? [1] 3

Tagged v2.0.0. Publish it with:

    git push --follow-tags

The entries decide the bump, so the prompt puts them next to the versions they would produce rather than leaving the choice to memory. Answering q, or anything unrecognized, changes nothing.

The tag push runs the release workflow, which waits on the whole CI workflow before it does anything else: the 3.12, 3.13, and 3.14 matrix and the dependency floor job. git push --follow-tags starts both at once, so without that wait an upload could go out while 3.14 was still running, or already red. It then checks that the tagged commit is on master, since a tag is only a pointer and one placed anywhere else would otherwise publish whatever it points at, rechecks the tag against the version in pyproject.toml, and builds.

Every check to that point runs against the source tree, so the workflow then installs the wheel it just built somewhere src/ is not on the path and imports it there, which is the only step that can catch a packaging mistake that left something out of the distribution. It uploads once that passes. There is no PyPI API token anywhere: the workflow authenticates with trusted publishing, which mints a short lived credential from the GitHub OIDC identity of that run. That same identity signs a PEP 740 attestation for each distribution, which PyPI serves beside the file it attests: trusted publishing establishes who uploaded, and the attestation establishes what was uploaded and which workflow built it. The upload skips anything PyPI already holds, so a run that uploaded one distribution and then failed on the other can be retried instead of stranding a version number that PyPI will never allow to be reused.

Uploading is followed by a GitHub release for the tag, carrying the CHANGELOG section for that version as its notes and the built distributions as its assets. The notes are collected before the upload rather than after, so that a CHANGELOG with no section for the version being released stops the release while stopping it is still possible.

Pushing the tag is the point of no return, since PyPI never lets a version number be reused. Everything just release does is local and amendable until then, and it refuses to start against a dirty working tree, off master, on a master behind its upstream, with a CHANGELOG whose Unreleased section is empty, or when the tag it would create already exists. Those refusals come before the lint and test run, so a release that cannot happen is turned away at once rather than after the suite. A refusal leaves the version and the CHANGELOG untouched.

just build runs the same checks and produces the same distributions without releasing anything, which is the way to inspect what CI would upload.

This depends on one piece of configuration that lives outside the repository. A trusted publisher has to be registered for keysight on PyPI, pointing at the questrail/keysight repository, the release.yml workflow, and the pypi environment. It is a one time setup per project.

License

keysight is released under the MIT license. Please see the LICENSE.txt file for more information.