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 equipment. Similarly, you can choose to use one of the supported backends for communication. You can choose to ignore the equipment registers concept and solely use the package to communicate with equipment. You can also choose to not use msl-equipment at all, but just use the Schema to create equipment registers that comply with ISO/IEC 17025. 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 but use different programming languages to read information from the same equipment register.