Skip to content

Installation

Basic Installation

You can install Instrumation directly from PyPI:

pip install instrumation

Hardware Requirements

To communicate with physical instruments, you have two options for the transport layer.

Install a vendor VISA implementation for maximum performance and mandatory GPIB support: - NI-VISA - Keysight IO Libraries Suite

Option 2: Pure Python (Ethernet/USB/Serial)

If you are only using Ethernet (LAN) or USB/Serial, you can avoid heavy vendor software by using pyvisa-py. This uses raw sockets and native USB drivers:

pip install pyvisa-py psutil

Simulation Mode (No Hardware)

If you only intend to use simulation for development, no additional drivers are required. Just set the environment variable:

$env:INSTRUMATION_MODE="SIM"

export INSTRUMATION_MODE="SIM"

Packaging as a Windows .exe (PyInstaller)

If you package an Instrumation app as a single-file Windows .exe, note that part of the library is dynamically loaded at runtime rather than imported at the top of the file:

  • pyvisa_py — the pure-Python VISA backend PyVISA uses when no vendor VISA library is installed.
  • instrumation.drivers.* — device drivers discovered at runtime via load_plugins() and lazy imports.

PyInstaller only bundles what it can see by static analysis, so a default build will be missing these modules. The .exe starts fine but fails the moment it tries to connect, with errors such as:

ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'pyvisa_py'
AttributeError: 'NoneType' object has no attribute 'rsplit'

Include them explicitly when building:

pyinstaller --onefile --windowed --name MyApp ^
  --collect-all pyvisa_py ^
  --hidden-import pyvisa_py.protocols.hislip ^
  --hidden-import pyvisa_py.protocols.vxi11 ^
  --collect-all instrumation ^
  app.py

Note for Windows: Instrumation never passes None to pyvisa.ResourceManager (it passes an empty string), so PyVISA automatically selects system VISA if installed and falls back to the bundled pyvisa_py otherwise.