pyLabDataLogger

Laboratory datalogging for USB and Serial devices

@author Daniel Duke <daniel.duke@monash.edu>
@copyright (c) 2018-2025 D.Duke
@license GPL-3.0+
@version 1.4.0
@date 09/06/2025

Multiphase Flow Laboratory
Monash University, Australia

This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
(at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
along with this program.  If not, see <https://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.

This software searches for sensors and data acquisition devices
over a range of communication protocols and logs them to a local file.

Summary

A lot of the measurement equipment used in scientific laboratories has the capability to connect to a PC. This is very handy when you want to keep track of hundreds of variables during an experiment - for example, temperatures, pressures, voltages, etc. However, many cheap devices have shockingly bad software. Often the software is Windows-only and unreliable. On the high end, expensive equipment with USB or Ethernet interfaces is very nice to use but can overwhelm inexperienced users. In some cases, the software is closed-source and this makes it very hard to get very different pieces of equipment (ie a $10 webcam, a $100 multimeter and a $1,000 digital pressure gauge) saving data into a single file at the same time. Other equipment uses RS-232 or RS-485 and demands that the user learn about baud rates, parity, and other things that they may not be familiar with.

In most cases, scientists simply want to keep a log of the readings of many different pieces of equipment at the same time. One way to do this is to use a proprietary platform like NI LabView. This is a very expensive solution to a simple problem, where you have to pay for hundreds of advanced features you don't need. Another way is to use datalogging software like sigrok, but this doesn't support a lot of high-end (ie SCPI) lab equipment.

This program provides the minimal set of Open Source tools required to record data from lab equipment:

• Connect via USB, Serial port, Ethernet or I2C bus etc. to various devices - both expensive and cheap, professional and consumer-grade.
• Attempt, where possible, to offer plug-and-play functionality for devices that are at their factory settings.
• Record live process variables from various devices at a given point in time.
• Save those data to a file or display them on screen.
• Provide a simple Python scripting interface to allow end users to record data in the way they want (ie. automatically every N seconds, or when an action such as a GPIO/interrupt or keypress occurs).
• Be lightweight enough to run on a Raspberry Pi or similar.

It's not desgined to control devices remotely, or provide feedback for PID etc. It's also not designed to provide a pretty user interface. If you need that, you should use LabView.

Changelog

Version 1.3

• Removed distutils and replace with setuptools to support Python 3.12.
• Updated USB searching algorithm.

Version 1.2

• There is a new script monitor_devices.py which will live-graph the first channel of every device to the screen while also logging to HDF5.
• Improved handling of Arduino serial devices
• Bug fixes for Omron K3HB series process meters
• Added support for BK Precision 168xx power supplies, AND G-series precision balances.

As of v1.1.3 Windows Subsystem for Linux 2 is confirmed supported

Windows support, finally! :-)

As of v1.1.0 the code has been ported to python3

Python2 support is no longer guaranteed, new drivers may break it.

This software has been tested on Raspbian, Ubuntu, Debian, Windows System For Linux 2 and MacOS.

You may need to tinker with src/device/usbDevice.py if your USB to Serial adapters have different VID/PIDs to mine.

Try scripts/test_usb_devices.py to poll compatible USB devices.

Supported hardware

• Sigrok devices confirmed working:

  • Tenma 72-7730A multimeter
  • Rigol DS-series oscilloscopes
  • USBee/LHT00SU1 ADC & logic analyser via fx2lafw driver
  • Tenma 72-7712 and UNI-T UT32x thermometers are supported with their own driver (See below)

• USBTMC devices that use SCPI command set

  • Agilent 33220A waveform generator,
  • Thorlabs TSP01 temperature & humidity logger
  • Thorlabs PM16 series power meters
  • Tektronix TBS 1052B oscilloscope

• NI-VISA over Ethernet devices that use SCPI command set

  • Rigol DG1000Z series delay generators
  • Rigol DS1000Z series oscilloscopes
  • Agilent 33220A waveform generator
  • Envox Experimental Zone EEZ BB3 modular programmable power supply

• Microcontrollers using FTDI or CP2102 serial over USB chips that push strings with format "VARNAME=VALUE, VARNAME=..." (i.e. Arduinos, RS-232 and RS-485 to serial adapters)

• pyAPT devices (ie Thorlabs K-cube motor drivers)

• Measurement Computing devices via mcc-libusb

  • MCC-USB-1608G confirmed working

• GPIB devices that use the GPIB-USB serial adapter

  • Tektronix TDS220 series oscilloscopes

• USB Devices with custom interfaces/drivers

  • Picolog USB-TC-08 thermocouple logger
  • Omega IR-USB thermometer
  • Omega USB-H 'high speed' pressure transducers
  • Omega Platinum Series Process Controllers via the micro-USB or RS-232/485 over USB
  • Fluke 568 IR thermometer
  • STATUS SEM1600/B Load cell amplifier
  • Omega Layer N Smart Probes via Omega IF-001 Modbus USB-Serial adapter
  • Status SEM1600/B Load Cell Amplifier
  • Tenma 72-7712 thermometer
  • Uni-T UT32x thermometer
  • RADWAG R-series balance via USB port

• USB Devices using Linux kernel drivers (not supported on MacOS)

  • USB audio capture devices via ALSA
  • Video4Linux capture interfaces (i.e. video capture cards, see Hardware.md for details)

• Generic USB webcams supported by OpenCV

  • Note that OpenCV2 can't tell multiple webcams apart, user would be asked which is which.

• CSI camera interfaces such as the Raspberry Pi Camera, using libcamera

  • see libcamera.org for information

• Thorlabs Scientific Cameras (using Thorlabs SDK and non-free drivers)

  • see https://www.thorlabs.com/software_pages/viewsoftwarepage.cfm?code=ThorCam requires Intel 32 or 64 bit processor (Thorlabs only provides precompiled DLLs)

• RS-232 Serial devices via Serial-to-USB adapters. pyLabDataLogger may not be able to auto-identify the USB VID & PID and you might be asked to select from a list of supported devices.

  • Tenma 72-2710 USB programmable bench power supply

  • BK Precision 168xx series programmable bench power supply

  • Pico RS-232 TC-08 thermocouple logger via generic RS-232 adpater

  • USB Current Clamp (marked as "AVIOSYS USB e-Meter 8870")

  • CENTER 310 humidity meter via model-specific serial to USB dongle

  • OHAUS digital lab scales via generic RS-232 adapter

  • Extech SD700 Barometric pressure/humidity/temperature datalogger via model-specific serial to USB dongle (must set mode switch on dongle to '2')

  • Alicat Scientific M-series mass flow meters via RS232-to-USB dongle (default baud rate 19200, default unit ID 'A')

  • Honeywell HPMA115S0 PM2.5/PM10 air quality monitor

  • COZIR carbon dioxide monitor

  • Leadshine ES-D508 servomotor controller

  • Metrix MX5060 Bench multimeter (contains an internal generic CP210x Serial-to-USB bridge)

  • Radwag WTB series digital lab balance/scale via RS232-to-USB UART adapter **

  • Radwag AS 62.R2 analytical balance (contains an internal Serial-to-USB bridge)

  • Ranger 5000 Load Cell Amp via RS232-to-USB adapter **

  • Omega iSeries temperature process controllers, via generic RS-485 or RS-232 adapter **

  • Omron K3HB-VLC load cell process controller with FLK1B RS-232/485 comms option board

  • Omron K3HB-X ammeter with FLK1B RS-232/485 comms option board

  • Bosch BNO055 9-DoF position sensor (gyro/magnetometer/accelerometer) via UART (no I2C support) **

    ** Double asterisk denotes the need for a TTL-UART type adapter without flow control lines. Testing with generic RS-232 to USB adapters indicated that when the PC attempts to take control of the flow control lines upon initialising the adapter, the device will cease transmitting and it cannot be restarted without disconnecting the serial cable. The simple solution is to wire up a TTL-to-UART adapter cable to an RS232 adapter, connecting only the RX, TX, VCC and GND lines (leaving the CTS/RTS/DTR lines disconnected).

• Single board computer (Raspberry Pi, Beaglebone) I2C bus hardware

  • Adafruit ADS1x15 12-bit ADCs via I2C
  • AHT10/AHT20 temperature + humidity sensors
  • Adafruit BMP085/BMP150 barometer/altimeter via I2C
  • H3LIS331DL accelerometer
  • MAX30105 light, particle and heartbeat sensor
  • MCP3424 18-bit ADC via I2C
  • MPR121 capacitative touch sensor
  • PCF8591 8-bit ADC via I2C
  • DFRobot Oxygen Sensor via I2C
  • TE M5300 (M53JM) series Pressure Transducer via I2C
  • TSL2591 lux sensor

• and some GPIO support using special scripts in raspberryPi directory:

  • Raspberry Pi low speed GPIO

• Web API (IoT) devices

  • Kaiterra Laser Egg CO2/Air Quality Monitor

Future supported hardware

• more I2C+SPI bus devices on the Raspberry Pi

• PicoScope headless oscilloscopes

• NI-VISA devices, such as

  • NI USB DAQ boards

• Firewire machine vision cameras (libdc1394) [https://damien.douxchamps.net/ieee1394/cameras/]

Notes

• Most devices require additional python modules or third party open source drivers. See INSTALL notes.

• Support for Tenma thermometers and multimeters via sigrok's UNI-T drivers using the UNI-T D04 USB to serial cables with the WCH.CN chips can require a bus reset on Linux before they'll work. To get around this you can run scripts/reset-WCH.CN.sh. These devices also have generic USB-to -serial adapters than can easily be confused. It may be necessary to specify the driver manually when the device is detected.

• MacOS doesn't allow userspace drivers to access USB HID devices for security reasons, so devices that use USB HID like sigrok's UNI-T drivers don't work.

See Hardware.md for more detailed information.