Quickstart — sync¶

The sync facade lives at nidaqlib.sync and wraps the async core through an anyio.from_thread blocking portal. Use it from scripts, notebooks, and REPLs where await is awkward.

from nidaqlib import AnalogInputVoltage, TaskSpec, Timing
from nidaqlib.sync import Daq, record

spec = TaskSpec(
    name="ai_demo",
    channels=[AnalogInputVoltage(physical_channel="Dev1/ai0")],
    timing=Timing(rate_hz=1000.0),
)

with Daq.open_device(spec) as session:
    block = session.read_block(samples_per_channel=1000)
    print(block.data.shape)

Continuous capture iterates as a normal for loop:

with Daq.open_device(spec) as session, record(session, chunk_size=1000) as (stream, summary):
    for block in stream:
        process(block)
        if summary.blocks_emitted >= 60:
            break

record_polled works the same way:

from nidaqlib.sync import record_polled

with Daq.open_device(spec) as session, record_polled(session, rate_hz=2.0) as (stream, _summary):
    for reading in stream:
        store(reading)

What the sync facade does (and doesn't) buy you¶

The sync facade hides await. It does not:

Run multiple sync sessions on the same portal — each Daq.open_device owns its own portal thread.
Make sync code faster than async. Calls cross a thread boundary; for high-throughput pipelines, prefer the async core.

The async API is canonical. When in doubt, use it.