pydwf
This is pydwf, a Python wrapper for the Digilent Waveforms library to control their line of multi-function lab devices. It fully implements all functionality offered by the underlying C library (over 400 functions!) in an easy-to-use Python API.
The package offers a convenient command line tool that can be used, among other things, to list the available Digilent devices and their configurations. The package comes with documentation (still sparse, but improving) and ready-to-run, well-written examples (already very useful), demonstrating how to use pydwf to perform useful measurements.
Like the DWF library, the pydwf package supports Windows, Linux (Intel and AMD), and macOS.
Supported devices
The pydwf package has been extensively tested with the Analog Discovery 2 and Digital Discovery devices. It should also work with other devices, like the legacy Analog Discovery, the Electronics Explorer board, and the new Analog Discovery Pro devices, but these haven't been tested.
If you have such a device and encounter issues, please let me know.
Dependencies
The pydwf package is Python 3 only.
It requires the Digilent Adept and Digilent Waveforms packages to be installed on your computer.
Furthermore, it depends on the numpy package to handle the large amounts of data that travel between the PC and the devices.
Some of the examples depend on the matplotlib library, but pydwf itself will work without it.
Project hosting
The project repository and issue tracker are hosted on github:
https://github.com/sidneycadot/pydwf/
Installation using pip
The installable package is hosted on PyPI:
https://pypi.org/project/pydwf/
This allows installation using the standard pip (or pip3) tool:
pip install pydwf
A working installation of the Digilent Adept and DWF libraries is a prerequisite for using pydwf. If the Waveforms GUI application provided by Digilent works, you're good to go.
After installing pydwf, the following command will show the version of pydwf and the underlying DWF library:
python -m pydwf version
The following command will list all Discovery devices connected to the system, and list their configurations:
python -m pydwf list -c
Documentation
The project documentation is hosted on readthedocs and can be reached via the following URL:
https://pydwf.readthedocs.io/en/latest/
If desired, the documentation can also be installed locally after installing the package by executing the following command:
python -m pydwf extract-html-docs
This will create a local directory called pydwf-docs-html containing the project documentation in HTML format.
Please note that the documentation is not yet complete — it's a big API!
Examples
The Python examples can easily be installed locally after installing the package by executing the following command:
python -m pydwf extract-examples
This will create a local directory called pydwf-examples containing the Python examples that show off the capabilities of the Discovery devices and pydwf.
These examples should provide a good starting point for your own Python scripts that control Digilent Waveforms devices.