sismatic 0.2.17

Blocking Python facade for driving Extron SIS devices over SSH

sismatic

A blocking Python facade for driving Extron devices over SSH using their Simple Instruction Set (SIS). The name is SIS + automatic: it handles the SIS machinery — connection pooling, the SSH handshake, byte-level framing — behind the scenes so you address a pool of devices by id and send plain instructions.

The package is a thin Python layer over a compiled Rust extension (sismatic-core), shipped as an abi3 wheel that covers CPython 3.9+ with a single build.

Install

pip install sismatic

Quickstart

from sismatic import Sis

# No connections are opened here; devices connect lazily on first use.
sis = Sis.from_file("devices.toml")

for device_id in sorted(sis.ids()):
    print(device_id)

sis.query("atrium-101", "firmware")          # read a built-in field
sis.register("atrium-101", "title", "Wk 4")  # write a metadata register
sis.command("atrium-101", "start")           # run a recorder command

Use it as a context manager to tear the session down deterministically:

with Sis.from_file("devices.toml") as sis:
    sis.command("atrium-101", "start")
# every SSH connection is closed on exit

Configuration

from_file picks the deserializer from the extension (.toml, .json, .yaml/.yml). A config is a defaults table plus a list of devices:

[defaults]
port = 22023
connect_secs = 5
command_secs = 3
eager = true              # open connections up front instead of on first use
sis_keepalive_secs = 120  # probe idle devices so warm connections stay warm

[[device]]
id = "atrium-101"
host = "10.0.0.7"
username = "admin"
password = "extron"

[[device]]
id = "annex-far"
host = "10.0.0.8"
username = "admin"
password = "extron"
connect_secs = 10  # per-device override
command_secs = 8

Not using a file? Sis.from_config(mapping) takes an already-parsed dict shaped the same way, so you can source config from INI, XML, a database row, or environment variables with any parser you like.

Connections are lazy by default — the expensive SSH handshake is paid on a device's first instruction. Set eager to pay it up front, and sis_keepalive_secs to send a benign probe on an interval so a device's inactivity timer never lets the connection go cold. See the design note on eager connections and SIS keepalive for the full rationale.

API at a glance

>>> from sismatic import Sis
>>> [m for m in dir(Sis) if not m.startswith('_')]
['close', 'command', 'from_config', 'from_file', 'from_toml', 'ids', 'query', 'register']

The wheel ships a PEP 561 py.typed marker and a type stub, so editors and mypy see full signatures, including the exact accepted instruction names. Full API docs: https://metzenseifner.github.io/sismatic/.

Example: start a recording across a batch of devices

# control_recording.py
# Starts recording and stamps a title across a batch of devices.

from dataclasses import dataclass
from sismatic import Sis

@dataclass(frozen=True)
class RecordingJob:
    """(device_id × title) as a product type. A job is exactly a pairing of
    the two — never one without the other — so the type says that, instead
    of the two strings being threaded separately through every call site as
    two positional arguments that happen to always travel together."""
    device_id: str
    title: str


def run_job(sis: Sis, job: RecordingJob) -> None:
    sis.register(job.device_id, "title", job.title)  # "title" — see Register::Title
    sis.command(job.device_id, "start")              # "start" — see Command::Start


def main() -> None:
    with Sis.from_file("devices.toml") as sis:
        jobs = [
            RecordingJob(device_id="atrium-101", title="Week 4 — Lecture"),
            RecordingJob(device_id="annex-far", title="Week 4 — Overflow Room"),
        ]
        for job in jobs:
            run_job(sis, job)


if __name__ == "__main__":
    main()

License

ECL-2.0. Part of the sismatic workspace.