plesty-server · plesty-bench

The bench PC's own console for the PLESTY platform. It installs hub modules, starts and supervises device servers, runs field tests against the real instruments, and runs experiments across the lab's benches — keeping the logs, the runs and their reports — so a lab bench is set up and kept running from one place instead of one venv, one terminal and one hand-written uv pin per instrument.

This repository publishes two packages:

Each release carries a Windows setup.exe (per-user, no admin) and an install.sh for macOS and Linux. Both install the whole application, console included, pinned to that release, and add a Start-menu or Launchpad entry. Without an installer, uv tool install "plesty-server[gui]" installs the same thing on macOS or Linux.

Bringing up a bench

plesty-server fleet init                      # a fleet.yaml to declare into
plesty-server declare pm100d plesty-pm100d --version 0.2.1 \
    --arg --address --arg "USB0::0x1313::…::INSTR"
plesty-server start pm100d                    # installs, launches, waits until it answers
plesty-server status

The instrument is now reachable from an experiment PC at this machine's address on the port status reports. plesty-server gui opens the same bench in a window; plesty-server fleet run keeps it up headless after a reboot.

Driving it from your own machine

The bench serves an agent; the client sends it plesty-server command lines and follows the output.

plesty-bench -b lab-bench-03 status
plesty-bench -b lab-bench-03 field-test pm100d --gates connect,drain
plesty-bench -b lab-bench-03 control pm100d          # a control panel per device

Documentation

Full documentation — start there if anything below is unfamiliar. It is in three parts:

A new bench starts at Set up a bench.

Design and internals covers the architecture, the process model, the port rules, the installer, the agent protocol, experiment runs, the platform differences and the release machinery — for contributors, and for anyone debugging behaviour that only makes sense once the mechanism is visible.

New to the platform? The PLESTY quickstart runs a whole experiment against a bench and is the gentlest way in.