Changelog for QCoDeS 0.15.0

The June 2020 release of QCoDeS. This release also includes all the changes mentioned in alpha release of June 2020 (Changelog for QCoDeS 0.15.0a1).

Breaking Changes:

  • GroupParameter.group, Group.parameters and Group.instrument are now all read only properties (#2031).

  • The public attributes Group.get_cmd and Group.get_cmd have been removed (#2031).

  • It is now an error to supply get/set_cmd, if get/set_raw is not abstract (#2015).

  • The sweep parameters such as ‘sweep_mode’, ‘sweep_start’, ‘sweep_end’, ‘sweep_steps’ in Keysight B1520A driver is moved from class is moved from B1520A class to CVSweeper class (#2044).

New drivers:

  • Add Zurich Instruments drivers. The old ZIUHFLI driver is deprecated. The actual implementation is in zhinst-qcodes as described in this blog (#2025).

Improved drivers:

  • New features are added to Keysight B1517A driver to allow IV staircase sweep measurements (#2028).

  • Various improvements are done on Keysight B1520A driver, such as, parsing correctly the wrong output floats (‘-0.-1’) from the instrument until new firmware release (#2023), improved testing (#2027), fixing spot measurement of capacitance checking for wrong impedance model, and working with ac_dc_volt_monitor=True (#2020), CVSweepMeasurements supports all impedance models (#2047).

  • The measurement status are added to current and voltage parameters of B1517A driver (#2051).

  • Added a method to obtain the measurement status summary of IV and CV Sweep measurements (#2050).

  • The get functionality for sweep_auto_abort and post_sweep_auto_abort parameters is added in Keysight B1517A and B1520A driver (#2049).

  • The error handling of Keysight B1500 driver is improved. Now each time a parameter is set the instruments queries for the error and throws exception is an error is received (#2041).

  • Now on_off_val_mapping is used instead of a custom parser in Agilent E8527D (#2030).

  • The parameter limits are added for the R&S ZNB-40 VNA R&S (#2029).

  • Add a few system functions to the Keithley 2450 driver (#2052)

Improved:

  • The DelegateParameter is now allowed to change source and also support a None source (#2005).

  • The GroupParameter now correctly update their cache when a single parameter in the group has been set or captured (#2031).

  • The GroupParameter now correctly implements mappings between value and raw_value e.g. scale and offset (#2031).

  • Snapshot_base introduce new update=None, and use cache in parameter’s snapshot_base (#1833).

  • Now initial cache value can be set to the Parameter using kwarg initial_cache_val (#1840).

  • The snapshots of stations and instruments can also be diffed now using diff_param_values (#2021).

Under the hood:

  • New lines are now handled correctly on windows (#2026).

  • In the Parameter class, the gettable/settable have become read only property (#2024).

  • Parameter cache.get is refactored to make the logic a bit more clear. Its functionality remains the same (#2008).

  • The loop data location in channels test is changed for pytest-xdist to work (#2010).

  • Added new dependency: “typing_extensions” (#2048)