Basic patterns and usage¶
This page gives an introductory overview about how the code can be used to solve common problems. This shall not replace a general introduction about the LUCIDAC computer and its abilities. This can be read in the end user documentation.
Interactive use¶
Typically, you want to write little scripts with lucipy in order to get your job done. However, lucipy can be fine used interactively. For instance, a typical mini interactive session works as follows:
me@localhost % export LUCIDAC_ENDPOINT="tcp://user:thepassword@123.123.123.123"
me@localhost % python
Python 3.12.3 (main, Apr 23 2024, 09:16:07) [GCC 13.2.1 20240417] on linux
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> import lucipy
>>> lucipy. [tab tab]
lucipy.Circuit( lucipy.Endpoint( lucipy.Route( lucipy.detect(
lucipy.Connection( lucipy.LUCIDAC( lucipy.circuits lucipy.synchc
>>> hc = lucipy.LUCIDAC() # hc is for hybrid controller
...
>>> hc.run_stop()
>>> exit()
me@localhost %
In this example, we used lucipy just to call a single command on the LUCIDAC, which is
the run_stop method in order to stop for instance a repetitive or long simulation currently
running. Of course this is a lot of boilerplate to type! Exactly for this use case, lucipy
provides the script examples/scripts/send_command.py which reduces this to
me@localhost % export LUCIDAC_ENDPOINT="tcp://user:thepassword@123.123.123.123"
me@localhost % examples/scripts/send_command.py run_stop
Go inspect the source code of this script in order to learn how to write your own ones.
Circuit configuration¶
The typical first time user experience of lucipy is to run a few of the Example circuits. They all follow the same schema:
Parameter study¶
In order to do a parameter study, one wants to loop the previously described process. Many “unit test cases” provided in the repository do this in order to aquire a lot of data.
It is possible to alter only parts of the configuration and send them, for instance by using
the set_by_path() method of LUCIDAC.
This, however, requires some understanding of the
entity concept of LUCIDAC.
This can probably speed up the configuration process a bit.
Data aquisition and Manual Steering¶
For interactive sessions with an oscilloscope, it can be very interesting to decouple the
integrated analog-to-digital data aquisition from the analog computer operating mode, i.e.
the simple state machine IC -> OP -> HALT. The method
manual_mode() is suitable for steering this mode for instance
from the python prompt or within a script. Note that this is far from allowing real time
control.
At the other hand, data aquisition can be triggered manually with the
one_shot_daq() call, which will return a single sample of the
eight ADC samples.