NICOS 3.6 has been released

NICOS 3.6 is now available for download.

Changes in this release series:

  • Core

    • In data acquisition, detector prepare() is now called after setPreset().

    • The command-line client can now display subsecond timestamps.

    • Experiments can now force single count()s to produce a scan dataset with one point.

    • A device parameter can now be defined as “internal”, which means that it is managed exclusively by the device’s code, and not accepted in setup files.

    • Non-Readable devices now also have an “active in dry-run” flag.

    • The new parameter validator “oneofdict_or” allows naming some special device values while also supporting unnamed values inbetween.

    • The collector daemon can now map device keys when forwarding between caches.

    • Added a Lorentzian fitter for use in the GUI and fit commands.

    • Daemon user authenticators can now add metadata to the returned User objects.

  • GUI

    • The display of the executed script now includes line numbers.

    • The device panel shows more actions for non-moveable devices, such as reset and enable/disable.

    • A new panel is available for low-level access to PLC devices following the PILS specification.

    • The Qt monitor now supports scale/offset specifiers for plotted values.

    • The standalone history application now also supports saved presets, restoring views, and listing the available keys for display, and it allows choosing the cache server to use.

    • Tabs in a tab bar guiconfig element can now be displayed on the left side.

  • Devices

    • Added a debugging data sink.

    • Added a Tango MotorAxis device.

    • Added a device to receive instructions from a barcode reader.

    • Slit devices can now reference their axes in parallel.

  • Commands

    • Added “abort()” which stops a script from within the script, which is more intuitive than raising an exception.

  • Tools

    • Added systemd integration with a unit that generates and starts units for each configured NICOS service, similar to the init script.

    • Added a tool to generate password hashes for the daemon setup.

    • Added a tool to rename devices in a flatfile cache database.

  • Development

    • Many more fixes for Python 3 and Qt 5.