Storage GUI

Creating a Storage GUI

To create a storage GUI subwindow:

1. Launch lys and open the proc.py file (press Ctrl+P).

2. Add the following code to define a class for the storage GUI subwindow and save it (press Ctrl+S).

from lys.widgets import LysSubWindow
from lys_instr import DataStorage, gui

class Window(LysSubWindow):
    def __init__(self):
        super().__init__()
        storage = DataStorage()
        storageGUI = gui.DataStorageGUI(storage)
        self.setWidget(storageGUI)
        self.adjustSize()

Calling Window() in the lys command line launches the GUI subwindow as follows:

Click File (icon) to select the data-saving directory (“Base Folder”). By default, this is the directory from which you launched lys. You can enter a “Folder Name” and “File Name” (without extension) directly.

The “Enabled” checkbox toggles data saving on or off. The “Numbered” checkbox enables automatic numbering in file names: the number specified in the spin box is appended to the file name (e.g., “yourDataFolder/yourFileName_0.npz”, “yourDataFolder/yourFileName_1.npz”). Data is saved in NumPy ndarray format (.npz).

Connecting Storage to Detector

In practice, a storage is used to save data acquired by a detector. Simply connecting a storage instance to a detector instance using the storage’s connect() method enables automated data saving.

Using the same detector instance as on the previous page, you can create a GUI for connected storage and detector:

from lys.widgets import LysSubWindow
from lys.Qt import QtWidgets
from lys_instr import DataStorage, dummy, gui

class Window(LysSubWindow):
    def __init__(self):
        super().__init__()
        detector = dummy.MultiDetectorDummy(frameShape=(256, 256))
        storage = DataStorage()
        storage.connect(detector)               # Connect storage to detector

        detectorGUI = gui.MultiDetectorGUI(detector)
        storageGUI = gui.DataStorageGUI(storage)

        VBox = QtWidgets.QVBoxLayout()          # Create a vertical box to hold the two GUIs
        VBox.addWidget(storageGUI)              # Add storage GUI to the box (upper)
        VBox.addWidget(detectorGUI)             # Add detector GUI to the box (lower)

        w = QtWidgets.QWidget()
        w.setLayout(VBox)
        self.setWidget(w)

        self.adjustSize()

The GUI layout is constructed using standard QtWidgets conventions (in the last 2-7 lines of the code above); you can ignore these details for now in this tutorial.

Calling Window() in the lys command line launches the combined GUI subwindow as follows:

On each acquisition event, the storage instance automatically saves the acquired data to the specified path.

For real applications, you need to connect the data storage instance to a device-specific detector instance.