Getting Started

Three concepts are used by msl-equipment

1. Equipment registers — to comply with the ISO/IEC 17025 standard
2. Connections — to interface with equipment for computer control
3. Configuration files — define requirements for a measurement (links items 1 and 2 together)

You do not need to use all three concepts for your application. You can choose to only use the equipment-register classes to help manage information about the equipment in your laboratory and use a different Python package to communicate with the equipment. Similarly, you can choose to use one of the supported backends for communication. You do not need to use msl-equipment at all. Since an equipment register is written in the eXtensible Markup Language (XML) file format, it may be parsed by many programming languages. This allows people to share a common equipment register and use different programming languages to read information from the same equipment register.