Hyperion Architecture¶
In this project we try to use general structure known as MVC: Model, View, Controller, used for websites. We take some ideas from there and put it together with some of our ideas.
In a nutshell, we use an onion principle to isolate the code that interacts with the instruments directly from the code that builds up the user interface.
General structure¶
The controller refers to the lowest level, where the actual communication with the devices happens. We use the language of the devices at this level.
The instrument is an intermediate layer where we abstract the specifics of the device into a more general mode. This helps to adapt to the view layer. It is the name we give to the model layer in the MVC, since it is more suitable for instrumentation projects.
Several instruments are condensed together to form an experiment where you can perform different measurements. In the folder examples you can find a few explanatory files that show how to use the complete package.
The view is all that concerns the graphical user interface (GUI) of the applications. It consist of files that build up the GUI and some extra python files to load all the modules needed to run it. Under the hook, this uses the classes from the lower levels. You can have a GUI for an instrument, that connects only to one device or a GUI for an experiment that connects to several devices. The design principle here is that any experiment and measurement should be independent of the view layer and thus can be run by just running code up to the experiment layer (not using the view layer). Then the view layer can be optional for users that require the graphical control of their experiment.
Detailed documentation¶
Here you can see the detailed documentation of all the objects in the package.