Real World Instrumentation with Python

Using Python to Create a Simulator

In this section we will examine two complete simulators written in Python: DevSim and the Simple Power Controller (SPC). Later, we’ll look at some other ways to achieve simulation using free and open source software. The sources for the simulators are located in the resource repository for this book, which can be accessed from the book’s web page. While these are fully functional simulators, they are also only examples, not production-grade tools. My hope is that you will use them as inspiration, or perhaps as starting points, to create your own simulator tools to meet your particular needs.

Python is well suited to creating simulators. It is easy to use, very flexible, and allows you to easily implement things such as plug-in modules. Working simulators can often be gotten up and running very quickly, and once in place they can be readily extended and revised as necessary. In addition, Python is capable of some impressive math tricks when add-on libraries such as SciPy or NumPy are installed, and as we’ll see shortly, generating graphical output is not that difficult.

On the other hand, Python is not as fast as code written in C or C++. That’s just the nature of the language and its underlying interpreter. If you need high-speed data generation and fast responses, you should probably consider another approach. Fortunately, most instrumentation applications have rather long time constants to begin with, so speed is usually not an issue.

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