watlowlib

Async-first Python driver for Watlow temperature controllers over RS-232 / EIA-485. Speaks both wire protocols Watlow controllers expose — Standard Bus (BACnet MS/TP outer framing + a small Watlow attribute service) and Modbus RTU (via the in-house anymodbus) — behind a single semantic Controller API that decodes to the same typed Reading either way.

Built as a sibling to alicatlib and sartoriuslib: the same async core, sync facade, multi-device manager, fake transport, acquisition helpers, and pluggable sinks.

Status: alpha. Both wire protocols, the Controller facade, WatlowManager, streaming, all sinks, the sync facade, and every CLI are implemented and covered by 579 passing tests across asyncio, asyncio+uvloop, and trio. The core has been exercised against a live EZ-ZONE PM3 (Standard Bus), a Series SD over Modbus RTU, and a Series F4P (the controller inside an ISDC IR-301 blackbody source) over Modbus RTU; the Modbus RTU side has codec / client / integration coverage plus captured PM3, SD, and F4P fixture goldens. Expect API churn until 1.0. See docs/design.md for the architectural reference.

Goals

• One protocol-neutral API. Controller.read_pv(), read_setpoint(), set_setpoint(), read_parameter() — the same calls work over Standard Bus and Modbus RTU, decoding to identical Reading / LoopState / DeviceInfo models.
• Auto-detect. open_device(..., protocol=ProtocolKind.AUTO) does Standard Bus probe → Modbus RTU probe → fail clearly. Read-only by construction; never sweeps opcodes or guesses bauds.
• Cross-protocol parameter registry. The EZ-ZONE register list carries both the Standard Bus selector (class/member/instance) and the Modbus register addresses for every parameter — so read_parameter("setpoint") lowers to either protocol from one shared registry.
• Typed end to end. Unit.FAHRENHEIT, Capability.HAS_COOLING, frozen-dataclass responses, py.typed, mypy --strict clean.
• Typed errors. WatlowError root with structured ErrorContext; every Standard Bus error code (0x81 / 0x83 / 0x84) and every Modbus exception (0x01–0x0B) maps to a distinct exception.
• Safety gates. Every PERSISTENT write — including setpoint, PID, baud, address, and protocol-mode changes — requires confirm=True.
• Multi-device. WatlowManager runs many controllers concurrently — same-port requests serialize, different ports run in parallel.
• Acquisition built in. record(...) drives one or many devices on an absolute-target cadence into pluggable sinks: InMemorySink, CsvSink, JsonlSink, SqliteSink in core; ParquetSink and PostgresSink behind extras.
• Swappable transports. SerialTransport for hardware, FakeTransport for tests, fixture-backed transports for regression goldens.
• Sync or async. Async core on anyio; complete sync facade at watlowlib.sync via a blocking portal — every async method has a sync parity.
• CLI tooling. watlow-read, watlow-discover, watlow-raw, watlow-decode, watlow-configure, and the watlow-diag reverse-engineering namespace.
• Lean core. pip install watlowlib pulls in anyio, anyserial, and anymodbus — nothing else.

Install

pip install watlowlib

# optional sinks
pip install 'watlowlib[parquet]'   # ParquetSink (pyarrow)
pip install 'watlowlib[postgres]'  # PostgresSink (asyncpg)

Requires Python 3.13+. Linux, macOS, BSD, and Windows are supported via anyserial. On Linux, the user running watlow-* needs read/write access to the serial device — usually by joining the dialout group.

Quickstart (async)

import anyio
from watlowlib import open_device, ProtocolKind


async def main() -> None:
    async with await open_device(
        "/dev/ttyUSB0",
        protocol=ProtocolKind.AUTO,
        address=1,
    ) as ctl:
        info = await ctl.identify()
        print(info.model, info.part_number, info.firmware)
        pv = await ctl.read_pv()
        print(pv.value, pv.unit)
        await ctl.set_setpoint(75.0, confirm=True)


anyio.run(main)

Older Watlow controllers (Series 96, F4, early EZ-ZONE) ship from the factory in Standard Bus; on those models Modbus RTU is the front-panel-opt-in mode. Newer EZ-ZONE firmware can ship in either mode depending on configuration. The ProtocolKind.AUTO detector tries Standard Bus first then Modbus RTU.

Quickstart (sync)

from watlowlib.sync import Watlow

with Watlow.open("/dev/ttyUSB0", address=1) as ctl:
    print(ctl.read_pv())
    ctl.set_setpoint(75.0, confirm=True)

Multi-device acquisition

import anyio
from watlowlib import WatlowManager
from watlowlib.streaming import record
from watlowlib.sinks import CsvSink, pipe


async def main() -> None:
    async with WatlowManager() as mgr:
        await mgr.add("oven", "/dev/ttyUSB0", address=1)
        await mgr.add("furnace", "/dev/ttyUSB0", address=2)
        async with (
            record(
                mgr,
                parameters=["process_value", "setpoint"],
                rate_hz=2,
                duration=3600,
            ) as stream,
            CsvSink("run.csv") as sink,
        ):
            await pipe(stream, sink)


anyio.run(main)

The recorder runs on an absolute target cadence (drift-free), batches samples per tick, and reports send/receive timing on every Sample.

Command-line tools

watlow-discover --port /dev/ttyUSB0 --protocol both # probe + identify
watlow-read --port /dev/ttyUSB0 --protocol auto -p process_value
watlow-read --port COM8 --profile f4p --address 10 -p process_value
watlow-decode "55 FF 06 00 10 ..."                  # offline Std Bus decode
watlow-raw --port /dev/ttyUSB0 stdbus --service read --class 4 --member 1
watlow-configure change-protocol-mode /dev/ttyUSB0 --target modbus_rtu --confirm
watlow-diag snapshot /dev/ttyUSB0 --out diag.json  # reverse-engineering aids

All CLIs accept --fixture FILE to drive a scripted FakeTransport, so end-to-end tests and demos work without hardware.

Documentation

Full docs live at https://watlowlib.graysonbellamy.dev/. Useful entry points:

• Async quickstart / Sync quickstart
• Controllers and capabilities
• Commands and safety tiers / Safety
• Parameter registry
• Streaming and acquisition / Logging
• Standard Bus reference / Standard Bus findings / Modbus RTU mapping
• Testing — FakeTransport, fixtures, hardware tiers
• Architecture (design doc)

Development

uv for env and lock management, hatchling + hatch-vcs for builds, ruff for format and lint, mypy --strict and pyright for types, AnyIO's pytest plugin for the test suite (parametrised across asyncio, asyncio+uvloop, and trio).

uv sync --all-extras --dev
uv run pre-commit install
uv run pytest
uv run ruff format --check .
uv run ruff check .
uv run mypy

Hardware tests are gated behind WATLOWLIB_ENABLE_STATEFUL_TESTS=1 and WATLOWLIB_ENABLE_DESTRUCTIVE_TESTS=1 and require a connected controller.

See CONTRIBUTING.md for the workflow and SECURITY.md for the disclosure policy.

License

MIT. See LICENSE.