REPO MOVED TO SLACLAB

The TimeChart (formerly PyDMCharting) project is now a part of the SLAC Lab home. It will be maintained and open for contributions at the new TimeChart repo. The rest of the TimeChart repo here is an archive.

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PyDMCharting: Python Display Manager Charting Tool

PyDMCharting is a Python Qt-based graphing application for control systems. It is intended to be the modern, feature-by-feature matching alternative to the Motif EPICS Strip Tool application.

Comparing with Strip Tool, PyDMCharting possesses the inherent cross-platform, responsive, and regularly maintained and supported advantages offered by Python Display Manager (PyDM). As a Python Qt-based framework, PyDM is also created and maintained by SLAC. Its charting capability is built upon pyqtgraph, and the PyDM's TimePlot is the central widget in PyDMCharting.

Prerequisites

• Python 2.7 or 3.5
• PyDM >= 0.18

Python package requirements are listed in the requirements.txt file, which can be used to install all requirements from pip: 'pip install -r requirements.txt'

Installing PyDMCharting

You must first install PyDM as it is the framework PyDMCharting is built upon. In doing so, you must first satisfy the PyDM prerequisites:

git clone https://github.com/slaclab/pydm.git
cd pydm
pip install .[all]

Next, clone this PyDMCharting depot:

git clone https://github.com/slaclab/pydmcharting.git
cd pydmcharting
pip install .[all]

Running PyDMCharting

In the pydmcharting directory, customize the pydmcharting_setup.sh setup script to the paths appropriate to your system. At minimum, you will need to provide the following settings:

• Where to source the environment setup script for using PyDM. Example: source /afs/slac/g/lcls/package/pydm/setup_pydm_env.bash
• The path to PyDM, exported as PYDM_PATH environment variable. Example: export PYDM_PATH=/u/re/hbui/local/dev/pydm
• Linux only: the path to the EPICS libca.so library. Example: export PYEPICS_LIBCA=/afs/slac/g/lcls/epics/base/R3.15.5-1.0/lib/rhel6-x86_64/libca.so
• Finally, if you plan to test PyDMCharting using PyDM's pydm-testing-ioc, you must export EPICS_CA_AUTO_ADDR_LIST=yes

To run PyDMCharting:

./PyDMCharting

Note that the command is case-sensitive.