LaserLogger is a simple tool to log usage of your laser sources and their key parameters such as currents, temperatures, power levels and frequencies.
This tool is particularly designed to work in conjunction with laser systems by Toptica, from which the parameters can be obtained via an Ethernet connection. Further data can be obtained from an MQTT broker or entered by hand.
LaserLogger is built using Python and wxWidgets.
A typical main window of LaserLogger might look as shown in the below screenshot.
The application is organized into three areas: a toolbar at the top, the main logbook area in the center and a statusbar at the bottom. We will now cover each area in more detail
Most of the possible operations within LaserLogger can be selected either from the toolbar or via a keyboard shortcut.
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Quit (Ctrl + p): Quit the program, a confirmation dialog is displayed in case of unsaved changes.
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Save (Ctrl + s): Save the state of the currently displayed logbook. The previous logbook file is maintained by creating a copy of the file first.
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New entry (Ctrl + n): Start a new logbook entry line and automatically fill in the start time with the current date and time.
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Autofill (Ctrl + a): Finish the topmost logbook entry line by filling in the stop time and all the parameters where information on automatic value retrieval is available. (See further below for information on how to set this up.)
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Duplicate (Ctrl + d): Copy the value from the cell directly below the currently selected cell and paste it into the current cell.
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Plot (Ctrl + p): Plot one or more selected columns in total or only for the selected subset of entries as function of the start time.
This main area of LaserLogger displays each configured logbook as its own tab. Click a tab to display and activate the corresponding notebook. An asterisk mark behind the logbook name indicates unsaved changes. The colored point is green when the topmost line of the logbook has both start and stop times, that is the laser is considered to be not in use. If, however, only a start time is present then the laser is considered to be in current use and the dot turns red.
The content of all cells can be manually entered and changed by the user. Most cells will be of numeric type, though, so only numeric input is possible. Also the display format is determined by the underlying display model.
To completely delete a row, left-click the number of the row on the very left and select 'Delete row' from the popup menu.
This is just your typical statusbar and mostly works as expected. It mostly displays confirmational messages on the most recent activities, such as saving a logbook. However, it also shows some general usage statistics (that is the total operation time) for the currently displayed logbook when switching to the corresponding notebook tab.
LaserLogger is configured via a JSON file laserlogger_settings.json that
needs to be put into the same folder as the main program. An example
configuration file that configures the individual logfiles and the MQTT
information might look as follows:
{
"logbooks": [
{
"name": "Er 583 nm",
"filename": "logfiles/logfile_583nm.csv"
},
{
"name": "Er 401 nm",
"filename": "logfiles/logfile_401nm.csv"
},
{
"name": "Li 671 nm",
"filename": "logfiles/logfile_671nm.csv"
}
],
"mqtt": {
"broker": "192.168.1.11"
}
}
This configuration specifies three 'logbooks', each with a name that will be shown on the GUI and a filename for the CSV file itself. The number of logbooks that can be specified is not limited (you might be running out of screen space, though). The 'mqtt' section just defines the location of the MQTT broker.
Note that LaserLogger will retain previous versions of the logbooks by appending the numbers 1 to 9 to copies of the most recent versions of the filename each time a new version is saved.
The loogbook files are standard comma-separated-value (CSV) files with the first two rows as header information. The first row defines the column names of the parameters included in the log. The second row includes information on how this information can be collected automatically by LaserLogger and the rest of the file is the logged data, one row per dataset. Even though the GUI presents the most recent data first, in the CSV file the most recent data is added to the end of the file.
A typical header might look as follows:
| Time\nStart | Time\nStop | LD\nCurrent\n(mA) | LD\nTemp\n(°C) | LD\nPiezo\n(V) | LD\nPD power\n(mW) | TA\nCurrent\n(mA) | TA\nTemp\n(°C) | TA\nPD power\n(mW) | SHG\nTemp\n(kΩ) | SHG\nPower\n(mW) | Lock\nEOM freq\n(MHz) | Lock\nIs freq\n(THz) | Lock\nULE trans\n(mV) | Lock\nIsotope | Comment |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| toptica://192.168.1.12:1998/laser1:dl:cc:current-act | toptica://192.168.1.12:1998/laser1:dl:tc:temp-act | toptica://192.168.1.12:1998/laser1:dl:pc:voltage-act | toptica://192.168.1.12:1998/laser1:amp:pd:seed:power | toptica://192.168.1.12:1998/laser1:amp:cc:current-act | toptica://192.168.1.12:1998/laser1:amp:tc:temp-act | toptica://192.168.1.12:1998/laser1:amp:pd:amp:power | mqtt://TEC/556NEL/resistance | mqtt://dpl_control/is/Yb_556_ULE_lock/frq | mqtt://wavemeter/WS8/is/is_ch5 | toptica://192.168.1.12:1998/io:fine-2:value-act |
In the first row the '\n' represent line breaks within the cell. The first line of each cell marks a group. Every time the group changes LaserLogger will switch between a gray and a white background for better visual distinction.
The first two column with start and stop time must always be present. Additionally LaserLogger recognizes some key words to determine the column format. Unit keywords are: THz, MHz, mA, A, mV, V, mW, nm. Furthermore 'Comment' (a strings) and 'Isotope' (an integer) are recognized. If not recognized a single digit floating point value will be assumed.
The second header row determines how the specified information is retrieved. An empty cell is for manual input. Entries beginning with 'toptica://' specify that a Toptica laser system should be contacted at the given IP and port for information under the specified path. See the Toptica documentation on available paths. If the path contains 'value-act' LaserLogger will retrieve 10 values in 50 ms intervals and report the average value. This is useful to, e.g., average over noisy photodiode readings. Similarly, the keywords 'mqtt://' signals that the information is to be obtained from the corresponding MQTT topic to which LaserLogger is constantly subscribed, always retaining the most recent message payload.
For any comments and/or bug reports please report to the author, [email protected].