plico_motor

client of a motor controlled under the plico environment

plico_motor is an application to control motors under the plico environment.

Installation

Note: it is recommended, before installing packages, to create a conda environment to work.

conda create --name myenv

To create an environment with a specific python version

conda create --name myenv python=3.7

To activate you environment

conda activate myenv

On server

On the server machine you install plico_motor_server with the following command

pip install plico_motor_server

This command also installs a server configuration file that needs to be modified. The file is located at 'yourLocalPath/plico_motor_server/plico_motor_server/conf/plico_motor_server.conf' and contains ip address and port number of your motor. There are five types of motor indicated with motor1, motor2, motor3, motor4 and motor5: this number is to be used to start the corresponding server.

The plico_motor_server package installs also the client package.

On client

On the client machine

pip install plico_motor

Usage

Customize configuration file

location: 'yourLocalPath/plico_motor_server/plico_motor_server/conf/plico_motor_server.conf' The configuration file can be edited by specifying the characteristics with which you want to set your motors at server start-up (speed, usb_port ...) and specifying the number of motors you want to use (from one to five).

Servers are available for:

• Any motor using the PI GCS communication protocol with serial or USB connection
• Tunable Filter (KURIOS VB1 - Thorlabs) with serial or USB connection
• Filter Wheel (FW102B - Thorlabs) with serial or USB connection
• Newport Picomotor linear actuators
• Standa 8SMC5-USB motor using driver Standa 8smc4-5: standa devices are currently not supported on MacOS X because the installation of the libximc library via pip command does not include the macosx package.

Starting Servers

On the servers machine use the executable

plico_motor_server_n

where n indicates the number of the server you want to start in according to what is declared in the configuration file. If you wish to start all servers included in the configuration file, use the command

plico_motor_start

Using the client module

In a python terminal on the client computer:

from plico_motor import motor
your_motor = motor(ServerHostName, ServerPort, axis)

Usage example

your_motor.home()
your_motor.move_to(1000)   #nanometers
your_motor.move_by(-50)