pycti-arbin 0.0.5

A class based Python interface for communication and control of Arbin cyclers over CTI.

PyCTI-Arbin

pycti-arbin is a Python module that provides cycler and channel level interfaces for communication and control of Arbin cyclers via their Console TCP/IP Interface (CTI).

Overview

• Motivation
• Installation
  • Source Installation
• Getting Started
  • Configuration
    • CyclerInterface Configuration
    • ChannelInterface Configuration
  • Env
• Getting Channel Readings
• Development
  • Contributing
  • Testing
    • ArbinSpoofer
  • Documentation
• License

Motivation

Why did we create pycti-arbin? This package enables a wide variety of applications such as:

• Real-time data logging, monitoring and alerting

pycti-arbin can be used to passively monitor running tests and log readings directly to a database, bypassing the need to manually export data. Moreover, it's possible to create automated alerts based on incoming real-time data. For example, if a test were to fault or temperature were to exceed a set threshold. While Arbin already has a built-in notification system with MacNotify, pycti-arbin provides a more flexible and customizable solution without having to directly modify test procedures.

• Automated test management

The GUI provided by Arbin for test management is straight-forward and easy to use, but requires significant manual work. With pycti-arbin it is possible to write programs to automatically start tests simultaneously across many channels (or even many cyclers) at once.

• Testing of next generation closed-loop charging methods

While conventional constant-current followed by constant-voltage (CCCV) charging has been the industry standard for many years and is well supported by cyclers, there is movement towards advanced closed-loop control charging techniques that provide improved battery life and decreased charge times. pycti-arbin enables testing of closed-loop battery charging methods by providing an interface between software hosting battery charging algorithms and active Arbin tests, allowing the charge current to be dynamically set.

• Well tested, easy to use, community supported interface in the most popular programming language.

It is entirely possible to write one's own CTI wrapper, but pycti-arbin provides a well-tested ready to use package that takes care of lower level communication, providing a simple yet powerful interface in the most popular programming language.

Installation

Using pip

pycti-arbin can be installed using pip:

pip install pycti-arbin

Source Installation

To install from source, type the following into the command line:

git clone https://github.com/BattGenie/pycti.git
cd pycti
pip install -r requirements.txt
pip install .

Getting Started

pycti-arbin provides two distinct classes for interacting with Arbin cyclers:

• CyclerInterface : A cycler-level interface for reading channel status of any channel on the cycler. This class is capable of read only operations on the cycler.

• ChannelInterface : A channel-level interface for reading status of a specific channel, starting/stopping tests on that channel, and assigning meta variables during active tests on the channel. This class is capable of read and write operations on a single channel.

Configuration

Both CyclerInterface and ChannelInterface require configuration dictionaries upon initialization. The fields of these configuration dictionaries are detailed in the following sections.

CyclerInterface Configuration

An example CyclerInterface configuration dictionary is shown below:

CYCLER_INTERFACE_CONFIG = {
    "ip_address": 127.0.0.1,
    "port": 1234,
    "timeout_s": 3,
    "msg_buffer_size": 4096
}

Where the fields are as follows:

• ip_address : str The IP address of the Arbin host computer.
• port : int The TCP port to communicate through. This is generally going to be 9031
• timeout_s : optional : float How long to wait before timing out on TCP communication. Defaults to 3 seconds.
• msg_buffer_size : optional : int How big of a message buffer to use for sending/receiving messages. A minimum of 1024 bytes is recommended. Defaults to 4096 bytes.

ChannelInterface Configuration

An example ChannelInterface configuration dictionary is shown below:

CHANNEL_INTERFACE_CONFIG = {
  "channel": 1,
  "test_name": "fake_test_name",
  "schedule_name": "Rest+207855.sdx",
  "ip_address": 127.0.0.1,
  "port": 1234,
  "timeout_s": 3,
  "msg_buffer_size": 4096
}

Where the fields are as follows:

• channel : int The channel to target with the ChannelInterface class instance.
• test_name : optional : str The test name to use if using the ChannelInterface to start a test.
• schedule_name : optional : str The name of the schedule file to use if using the ChannelInterface to start a test.
• ip_address : str The IP address of the Arbin host computer.
• port : int The TCP port to communicate through. This is generally going to be 7031
• timeout_s : optional : float How long to wait before timing out on TCP communication. Defaults to 3 seconds.
• msg_buffer_size : optional : int How big of a message buffer to use for sending/receiving messages. A minimum of 1024 bytes is recommended. Defaults to 4096 bytes.

Env

In addition to a configuration dictionary, both interfaces require a .env file containing the Arbin CTI username and password to use for communication. The .env file path can be passed as a constructor argument. If it is not specified, the the program looks in the working directly for a .env file.

The .env file must contain the following fields:

ARBIN_CTI_USERNAME='your_username'
ARBIN_CTI_PASSWORD='your_password'

Where your_username and your_password should be replaced with your username and password.

Getting Channel Readings

To get channel readings with a CyclerInterface you must specify which channel you want to read from:

from pyctiarbin import CyclerInterface

CYCLER_INTERFACE_CONFIG = {
    "ip_address": "127.0.0.1"
    "port": 1234,
    "timeout_s": 3,
    "msg_buffer_size": 4096
}

cycler_interface = CyclerInterface(CYCLER_INTERFACE_CONFIG)
cycler_interface.read_channel_status(channel=1)

For a ChannelInterface there is no need to specify the channel since we define it in the config:

from pyctiarbin import ChannelInterface

CHANNEL_INTERFACE_CONFIG = {
  "channel": 1,
  "test_name": "fake_test_name",
  "schedule_name": "Rest+207855.sdx",
  "ip_address": "127.0.0.1"
  "port": 1234,
  "timeout_s": 3,
  "msg_buffer_size": 4096
}

channel_interface = ChannelInterface(CHANNEL_INTERFACE_CONFIG)
channel_interface.read_channel_status()

For more examples of how to use the CyclerInterface and ChannelInterface class see the demo_notebook.ipynb and documentation.

Tested MITS Pro Version

Version	Build	pycti-arbin
Mits8 PV.202110	Oct 4 2021	0.0.4

Development

This section contains various information to help developers further extend and test pycti-arbin

Contributing

As it exists now pycti-arbin only implements a fraction of the messages supported by CTI. Further work can be done to expand pycti-arbin to include more of the messages detailed in the CTI documentation docs/ArbinCTI_Protocol v1.1.pdf.

We welcome your help in expanding pycti-arbin! Please see the CONTRIBUTING.md file in this repository for contribution guidelines.

Testing

To run the tests navigate to the "tests" directory and type the following:

pytest .

To run tests and generate a coverage report:

coverage run -m pytest

To view the generated coverage report:

coverage report -m 

ArbinSpoofer

Testing software on a real cycler is dangerous so we've created a submodule arbinspoofer to emulate some of the behavior of the Arbin software with a class ArbinSpoofer. This class creates a local TCP server and that accepts connections from n number of clients. The ArbinSpoofer does not perfectly emulate a Arbin cycler (for example, it does not track if a test is already running on a channel) and merely checks that the message format is correct and responds with standard messages.

Documentation

All documentation was generated with pydoc. To re-generate the documentation type the following command from the top level directory of the repository:

pydoc --html .

License

MIT License

Copyright (c) 2023 BattGenie Inc.

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE