Hardware sets

Hardware sets are collections of hardware device types along with their associated parameters. They are used in FROG to represent a particular hardware rig (e.g. FINESSE or UNIRAS), so that users can easily swap between them. FROG comes with some built in configurations, but users can also define their own, either for convenience during testing or to build on FROG's functionality.

Hardware sets are represented in a YAML format. Custom hardware sets can be created and imported into FROG. Here is an example:

version: 1
name: My hardware set
devices:
  stepper_motor:
    class_name: stepper_motor.st10_controller.ST10Controller
    params:
      port: "0403:6011"
      baudrate: 9600
  temperature_controller.hot_bb:
    class_name: temperature.tc4820.TC4820
    params:
      port: "0403:6011 (2)"
      baudrate: 115200
  temperature_controller.cold_bb:
    class_name: temperature.tc4820.TC4820
    params:
      port: "0403:6011 (3)"
      baudrate: 115200
  temperature_monitor:
    class_name: temperature.dp9800.DP9800
    params:
      port: "0403:6001"
      baudrate: 38400
  sensors:
    class_name: sensors.em27_sensors.EM27Sensors
  spectrometer:
    class_name: spectrometer.opus_interface.OPUSInterface
    params:
      host: 10.10.0.2
      port: 80

The version indicates the version number of the hardware set definition, currently 1. The name property defines a human-readable name for the hardware set, to be displayed in the GUI and the devices property contains information about the devices in this hardware set. The devices array consists of key-value pairs, with the keys corresponding to device base types (see Hardware). The values are YAML objects with a class_name property and (optionally) a params property. class_name is a string corresponding to the Python class name, along with the last part of the module name (all plugins are in the frog.hardware.plugins module, so this part is omitted). params is also a YAML object, containing key-value pairs for each of the device parameters (see Hardware again). If any of the parameters are omitted, their default values will be used.

Note that the port names are in a FROG-specific format. The string is composed of the USB vendor and product IDs and (optionally) a number to distinguish ports which share all these properties (as happens with USB-to-serial devices with multiple ports, for example). The easiest way to figure out these strings is to run FROG and click on "Manage devices". The available USB ports will be listed in the dialog.