QCoDeS 0.37.0 (2023-01-26)

Breaking Changes:

  • InstrumentBase.ancestors now returns a tuple of ancestors to the current Instrument, InstrumentChannel or InstrumentModule and not a list.

    dond ``, ``do1d etc. now returns tuples of Matplotlib axes and colorbars when plotting and not lists. (#4894)

  • Datasets are now exported to a folder next to the database by default rather then to the users home folder. Note that if you had specifically configured this in a local config file this should be updated too for the change to take effect. (#4899)

  • DriverTestCase has been moved from qcodes.instrument_drivers.test to qcodes.tests.driver_test_case. (#4922)

  • qcodes.instrument_drivers.VoltageDivider and qcodes.instrument_drivers.devices.VoltageDivider has been deprecated. Its functionality is better implemented in qcodes.parameters.DelegateParameter which is also significantly better tested and more general. (#4923)

  • The QDevil QDAC 1 driver has been migrated to qcodes_contrib_drivers and is included from version 0.18.0. The driver in QCoDeS is deprecated and will be removed in a future release. (#4932)

  • Remove deprecated Mercury iPS driver qcodes.instrument_drivers.oxford.mercuryiPS.MercuryiPS, use qcodes.instrument_drivers.oxford.OxfordMercuryiPS instead. (#4936)

Improved:

  • When a dataset is exported an optional user supplied entry point is called. See here for more details. (#4857)

  • PyVISA 1.13 is now supported. (#4895)

  • validate method of DelegateParameter now also validates the given value against the validator of the source parameter (if source parameter is present). (#4870)

  • The dataset logic has been updated to ensure that if you set an already completed dataset as completed the completion timestamp will not be updated. (#4876)

  • Update the pyqtgraph plot backend for upstream changes in pyqtgraph. (#4886)

  • QcoDeS is now typechecked with Pyright in addition to mypy. This should give a significantly better user experience when working in VS Code. (#4938)

Improved Drivers:

  • The Minicircuits USB SPDT driver now supports running with the more modern version of the driver DLL mcl_RF_Switch_Controller_NET45.dll (#4623)

  • Two parameters are added to the Keysight.N51x1 class, conditioned on it having the ‘UNW’ option:

    1. Having the pulse modulation status on or off.

    2. Setting it to ‘internal’ or ‘external’.

    From the Keysight manual:

    1. This command enables or disables pulse modulation for the selected path.

    2. This command sets the source of the pulse modulation. (#4840)

Under the hood:

  • Improve performance of parameter validator. (#4887)