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dtollib

Experiment-facing DT-Open Layers acquisition tools for Python.

dtollib is a typed, lifecycle-managed acquisition layer over a hand-rolled ctypes binding to the Data Translation DataAcq SDK. It fits the same scientific-instrumentation ecosystem as alicatlib, sartoriuslib, watlowlib, and nidaqlib.

Use dtollib when you want:

  • declarative task specifications for DT9805 / DT9806 acquisition,
  • consistent async/sync APIs,
  • structured errors with rich context,
  • block-oriented continuous acquisition with hardware clocks,
  • TC sentinel preservation (no silent "23.4 °C" for an open thermocouple),
  • Parquet / SQLite / Postgres / CSV / JSONL logging,
  • a "raw counts to disk" fast path equivalent to NI's TDMS,
  • hardware-free tests against a faithful FakeDtolBackend,
  • and unified experiment workflows across DT-Open Layers, NI, Alicat, Sartorius, and Watlow.

Status

The Phase 0–5 software surface has landed and is exercised end-to-end against FakeDtolBackend. The package installs and imports cleanly on Windows, Linux, and macOS; on Windows with the DataAcq SDK installed it drives real DT9805 / DT9806 hardware. Bound and working:

  • Discovery + diagnostics — find_devices, find_subsystems, CapabilitySet, dtol-discover, dtol-diag.
  • Single-value analog input — TaskSpec, AnalogInputVoltage, ThermocoupleInput, open_device, session.poll(), with NIST thermocouple math and sentinel preservation.
  • Continuous acquisition — record(), record_polled(), the §12.3.2 driver-thread callback bridge, DaqBlock, and the CSV / JSONL / RawCounts sinks plus the .dt-raw replay tool.
  • Single-value output + safety gates — session.write(), dtol-read, dtol-info, analog/digital output channel specs.
  • Counters, triggers/retriggering, and DtolManager.start_synchronized.

Hardware acceptance on the maintainer bench is ongoing, and some original roadmap targets have been revised to match DT9805 / DT9806 capability findings (e.g. continuous AO waveform output is unavailable on these boards) — see plan-hardware-functional.md. For the phased roadmap and architecture see design.md and implementation-plan.md.

Platform support

DT-Open Layers is Windows-only. pip install dtollib works on Linux/macOS for type-checking and ecosystem composition, but the real backend raises DtolDependencyError at first SDK touch.