Tutorial

The following sections will guide you through the first steps on using PyTango.

• Clients
  • Test the connection to the Device and get it’s current state
  • Read and write attributes
  • Execute commands
  • Execute commands with more complex types
  • Work with Groups
  • Handle errors
• Servers
  • Quick start
  • Start server from command line
  • Advanced attributes configuration
  • Create attributes dynamically
  • Use Python type hints when declaring a device
• Database
  • Registering devices
• Logging
  • Basic logging
  • Logging with print statement
  • Logging with decorators
• Asynchronous (green modes)
  • Client green modes
  • Server green modes
• ITango

But before you begin there are some fundamental TANGO concepts you should be aware of.

Fundamental TANGO concepts

Tango consists basically of a set of devices running somewhere on the network.

A device is identified by a unique case insensitive name in the format <domain>/<family>/<member>. Examples: LAB-01/PowerSupply/01, ID21/OpticsHutch/energy.

Each device has a series of attributes, pipes, properties and commands.

An attribute is identified by a name in a device. It has a value that can be read. Some attributes can also be changed (read-write attributes). Each attribute has a well known, fixed data type.

A pipe is a kind of attribute. Unlike attributes, the pipe data type is structured (in the sense of C struct) and it is dynamic.

A property is identified by a name in a device. Usually, devices properties are used to provide a way to configure a device.

A command is also identified by a name. A command may or not receive a parameter and may or not return a value when it is executed.

Any device has at least a State and Status attributes and State, Status and Init commands. Reading the State or Status attributes has the same effect as executing the State or Status commands.

Each device as an associated TANGO Class. Most of the times the TANGO class has the same name as the object oriented programming class which implements it but that is not mandatory.

TANGO devices live inside a operating system process called TANGO Device Server. This server acts as a container of devices. A device server can host multiple devices of multiple TANGO classes. Devices are, therefore, only accessible when the corresponding TANGO Device Server is running.

A special TANGO device server called the TANGO Database Server will act as a naming service between TANGO servers and clients. This server has a known address where it can be reached. The machines that run TANGO Device Servers and/or TANGO clients, should export an environment variable called TANGO_HOST that points to the TANGO Database server address. Example: TANGO_HOST=homer.lab.eu:10000

Check the default TANGO host

Before you start you might check your default TANGO host It is defined using the environment variable TANGO_HOST or in a tangorc file (see Tango environment variables for complete information)

To check simple do:

>>> import tango
>>> tango.ApiUtil.get_env_var("TANGO_HOST")
'homer.simpson.com:10000'

Check TANGO version

PyTango is under continuous development, and some features are unavailable in earlier releases. To be sure, specific features are available, you should check your installation.

There are two library versions you might be interested in checking: The PyTango version:

>>> import tango
>>> tango.__version__
'9.5.0'
>>> tango.__version_info__
(9, 5, 0)

and the Tango C++ library version that PyTango was compiled with:

>>> import tango
>>> tango.constants.TgLibVers
'9.5.0'